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.