Romney Alienates England

First of all, sorry about the light posting the last couple of days. Things are back to normal. Now: How could a presidential candidate go over to another country on the eve of its hosting of the Olympics and say this?:

Romney said the fallout from the G4S security fiasco and a threatened strike by immigration officials were "disconcerting" and questioned whether British people would get behind the Games.

"Do they come together and celebrate the Olympic moment? And that's something which we only find out once the Games actually begin. It is hard to know just how well it will turn out," said Romney.

What? Mitt, how about, you know, "Knowing the great British people as I do, who are still possessed of that spirit that saw them through the blitz, I'm completely confident that everything will turn out marvelously"? What a dweeble.

Meanwhile, this ad by a pro-Obama PAC about the precise sorts of people Romney is raising money from over there on the isle is actually extremely good and pointed. In the middle of the Libor scandal, he's over there raising money from some Barclay's officials, and telling them (probably, since it's his position and since they have an interest in the matter) that he wants to repeal Dodd-Frank? As they say over there, gobsmacking.

In Romney's semi-defense, I, like Frum, don't put a lot of stock in the "Anglo-Saxon" comment. An unnamed aide speaking to a British paper...well, let's just say that that quote could have originated in a number of different ways.

In any case, it's dead wrong. Obama and David Cameron appear to have a man-love thing going between them. Whatever was icy with Gordon Brown has melted.

But take note. This is three different kinds of bad press on day one of the bloody trip--all three seemingly generated by the campaign itself. And London is supposed be the easy leg of a foreign trip.