“Because the Cold War has been over for 20 years,” Obama continued. “But governor, when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policy of the 1950s, and the economic policies of the 1920s.”
The line killed, of course. But boy, does it hit differently now.
You’d think that his smugness around Russia then — and the subsequent events proving him dead wrong — would have humbled the former president.
But if he feels any regret, he’s not showing it.
At a conference titled “Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy,” hosted by the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics and The Atlantic this week, Obama was asked point blank if he wishes he’d been stronger on Putin knowing what we do now.
Visibly annoyed, he answered, “I actually don’t, because the circumstances were different.”
And he defended not arming the Ukrainians because “we were concerned about making sure that we did not give [Russia] an excuse for another incursion,” and “you had issues of training.”
He congratulated Europe for arriving today where he had wanted them back then.
And he stunningly explained how we got to a place where Russia believed it could invade a sovereign nation. He said, western democracies “have gotten complacent.” Seemingly, the kind of warning Romney was flagging in 2012.
It’s hard to imagine a person being less self-reflective and more dug in on an obvious foreign policy blunder, and one that you could easily argue helped lay the path for this current invasion.
But when you remember just how awful Putin proved to be in the years following Obama’s debate punchline, it’s actually far worse.
Obama certainly is aware of all of this, yet he said this week, “I don’t know that the person I knew is now the same as the person who’s leading this charge [against Ukraine].”
This is simply bizarre. Revisionist. Amnesiac.
But in Ukraine, he wouldn’t have changed a thing? This defies logic.
Romney wasn’t prescient in 2012, he was merely sentient, seeing Putin for who he clearly was and understanding the threats. Obama’s misreading can be forgiven, but all this time later, with everything we now know, it’s very hard to understand his hard-headedness.