Posted By Daniel W. Drezner Share

Your humble blogger is badly behind on many day-job activities.  As a result, I'm afraid that I can't comment in detail on Mitt Romney's foreign policy VFW speech.  There was stuff in there that resonated with me and stuff that had me shaking my head. 

My key takeaway, however, is that there was actual stuff in the speech.  The contrast with Rick Perry's VFW speech is pretty striking.  Looking at the two of them back-to-back, one can see a similar set of applause lines.  The difference is that Romney's speech contains actual, specitic critiques of Obama's foreign policies.  These critiques can be debated, but at least there's content to debate about in this speech. 

In contrast, as previously noted, Perry's speech lacked anything remotely resembling content

Perry is a late entry to the 2012 nomination, so maybe this is just a case of being new to the campaign trail.  Maybe foreign policy is not a subject that Perry likes to focus on.  I honestly don't know, and I'll be looking for more content as the campaign intensifies. 

All I do know is that if the status quo persists for Rick Perry, there's gonna be a lot of opportunities for new Trumpie and Blitzer nominations. 

Am I missing anything? 

 

 

APPALLED MODERATE

4:58 PM ET

August 31, 2011

Yes, You're Missing That This Isn't A Foreign Policy Election

Rick Perry isn't saying anything on Foreign Policy because he does not need to. Afghanistan is a non-presence in the national discussion, Iraq is done, Libya is done as far as we're concerned, and Al Qaeda is on its way to done. So, Perry can get by with the usual pablum, and move on to spending, jobs and the economy. (Of course his rhetoric on those issues, maybe we should take some comfort that he is sticking with cliches on foreign policy? Wouldn't want Perry caling China a Ponzi Scheme, would we?)

 

Daniel W. Drezner is professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

Read More