Today I've been watching the Republican Ministry of Propaganda doing their best to Swift Boat the President. This is the permanent Republican campaign strategy for races at all levels: identify the Democratic opponent's strongest virtues and try to negate them with a well-funded blitzkrieg campaign. They always do this, so it's no surprise that they're doing it now--especially since the Democrats had the effrontery to point out that Candidate Romney had stated that he wouldn't go after Bin Ladin.

No one forced Romney to say that. Now he's trying to pretend he didn't. Or at the least that President Obama has no right to bring it up.

This from the party that diverted an aircraft carrier from its homecoming--and the reuniting of its 5,000+ crewmen with their loved ones--in order to provide--at taxpayer expense--a campaign visit to the carrier with President Bush II tricked out in naval aviation gear and landing on the carrier (as a passenger), then making a speech exulting in our victory in Iraq, backed by a giant Mission Accomplished banner hung on the carrier's superstructure, lest any dolts watching might miss the point.

Of course the real issue is that the pollsters tell us a solid majority of Americans trust President Obama to manage our foreign policy far more than they do Governor Romney.

And the Democrats' ad coupled Romney's preference to abandon the hunt for Bin Ladin with his willingness for Detroit to go bankrupt.

Now Romney did mean "managed bankruptcy" when he said "let Detroit go bankrupt" but Romney's solution would still have resulted in General Motors and Chrysler being liquidated, because no one but the U.S. government was willing to pony up the cash needed to keep them alive, and Romney was against the government bailing them out.

The fact that President Obama's solution did the union workers a favor at the expense of bondholders--contrary to bankruptcy law--is something conservatives can argue, but it's beside the key point: Romney would have left America with one major auto company; Obama left us with three.

There's a link between Romney's disinterest in finding Bin Ladin and in rescuing Detroit: in both cases he takes a business investor's pure spreadsheet-based viewpoint. He didn't see the ROI in either case (Return on Investment).

I get the impression that larger issues are kind of invisible to Romney. He's never shown an interest in foreign affairs or in the world of ideas. He is indeed a businessman. And there's nothing wrong with that. But he doesn't seem to be anything else.

If that's so, then his presidency will be a Republican dream come true: a fiscal conservative who's more than happy to let Grover Norquist's Congress pass him bills to rubber stamp, regardless of content. I predict that if he gains the White House and the Republicans retain control over the House and their veto over the Senate doing anything, Romney will never veto a bill sent to him by the GOP--he won't even threaten to veto one.  He is nothing if not eager to please Republicans. And, like Bush II, completely indifferent to the approximately 50% of the country that won't be voting for him.

Romney's foreign policy naievité

Romney said he wouldn't have tracked down Bin Ladin before he said he would have. He said ordering the raid--deep within the territory of a sovereign nation and a putative ally as well--was a no-brainer. He said that "even Jimmy Carter would have done it." Jimmy Carter, a former naval officer who served with distinction and personal bravery (in the aftermath of a nuclear reactor meltdown), and who ordered a raid just as daring as the one President Obama ordered, but which tragically failed.

All of this betrays not just ignorance of the complexities of decisions like the one President Obama made a year ago, but also the casual contempt many Republican tribalists show for anything any Democrat ever did or was. And turning the attempt to rescue our diplomatic staff from Iran's Islamofascists into a laugh line was contemptible. This by someone who complained that President Obama was making political hay out of killing Bin Ladin.

But I can understand Romney's distress. The Republican brand is founded upon the notion that Republican presidents are brave in war while Democrats are weak and indecisive. (Which is also why Romney alludes to the President's "apology tour" after taking office, while he was trying to somehow deal with the damage President Bush did to America's interests abroad during the mini-Dark Age of his presidency.)

Pretty much everything Romney has said about foreign affairs has been childishly chest-beating and simplistic. Not to mention letting it be known that as president he'd simply let Benjamin Netanyahu dictate our Mideast policy. Being a friend of Israel does not equate with doing that. Many would argue just the opposite, in fact. Though constantly saber-rattling at Iran does raise the price of gas, which helps his election chances.

So would Romney have made the same decision as President Obama. What he said without the genius of hindsight is that he wouldn't have okayed the hard work of many people that even made the decision possible, and he still seems oblivious to the fact that we didn't know for sure that he was there, or how well he'd be defended, or whether we should have just sent in a cruise missile--which was Bob Gates' recommendation.

When voting for president, far above the particularities of partisan politics, we have to ask ourselves whether the guy gets it--understands how profoundly difficult the job is. This dwarfs the difficulty of business decisions where fortunes may be at stake but rarely lives...and a nation's future.

We don't have to guess at how President Obama would do if we part the veil of partisanship and look at what he's actually done--had those Somali pirates killed; had Bin Ladin killed; had most of Al Qaeda's top leadership killed via UAV; did as much as could be done in Afghanistan, and in all cases did what he said he'd do. Anyone who calls this guy "weak and indecisive" is leading a rich fantasy life.

I'm not saying he always does everything right--just that he takes the job seriously and is as much of a proper Commander in Chief as any president we've had since Eisenhower. Probably more.