Condi Rice Can’t Name A Specific Obama Foreign Policy Failure

Today on CBS’s morning show, former Bush administration Secretary of State and top Mitt Romney surrogate Condoleezza Rice could not offer any specific foreign policy failures made by President Obama. Romney’s allies, led by Rice and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), are expected to attack Obama on national security grounds tonight in at the Republican National Convention in Tampa.



But when asked to offer specifics this morning on CBS, all Rice could come up with was some vague attack on Obama’s Syria policy, which, host Norah O’Donnell noted, the president himself might agree with:

O’DONNELL: Can you be specific about somewhere where you think President Obama has failed on foreign policy. 

RICE: What we should do tonight, is talk about what a President Romney would mean for America. It’s not a time to look back, it’s a time to look forward. We have real challenges out there, in the Middle East, in Asia, in Europe, with our allies. 

O’DONNELL: But if President Obama isn’t doing anything wrong, then why change things?
RICE: It’s a question of what a President Romney would do and there is no doubt that the United States’ voice has been muted and when the United States’ voice is muted the world is a more dangerous place. 

O’DONNELL: How is the United States’ voice muted?
RICE: Just look at the situation in Syria for instance. We have a circumstance in which Assad is butchering his people. The Iranians are helping him to do so. The United States seems to be mired in the Security Council. The Russians and the Chinese say no, no, no and we don’t have an answer. When that is the case, it’s a dangerous place. … 

O’DONNELL: But I think the president agrees with that as well. Having covered the White House, the question is whether … a President Romney would be willing to advocate and commit American troops, American lives, in a place like Syria right now.

Watch the clip:

                                 

So despite the fact that the GOP plans to attack Obama’s foreign policy, Rice has no interest in “looking back.” Instead, she said, she wants to “look forward,” yet shedoesn’t have any idea what Romney’s international agenda is either. And on Syria, it turns out that the policy Romney has articulated thus far isn’t much different from the Obama administration’s.

But as far as attacking Obama on foreign policy grounds goes, the Republicans are going to have a tough time. Poll after poll shows that Americans favor Obama over Romney in handling international issues. And the Wall Street Journal noted today that their recent poll “found 54% of voters approve of Mr. Obama’s handling of foreign policy, his highest score in more than a year and far better than what either George W. Bush or Bill Clinton fetched as they sought re-election.”