Politics: Never Retreat, Never Apologize

Now playing: Slate V, a video-only site from the world's leading online magazine. Visit Slate V at www.slatev.com.
Politics Never Retreat, Never Apologize Romney's foreign policy vision is little more than a promise to talk tough—at all costs. By David Weigel Posted Wednesday, Jul 25, 2012, at 09:37 PM ET From time to time, from the end of 2008 through the start of his second presidential campaign, Mitt Romney would take out a legal pad and scribble his thoughts on the current foreign policy crises. The results might make it into a newspaper's op-ed page, or National Review's blog. Most of the ruminations made it into his book, No Apology, which he encouraged nosy voters to buy if they wanted to mind-meld with him. "I spent almost nine months writing it," Romney said at one of his first town halls in 2011. "A ghost writer … came back with the first chapter, I read it and said, 'This'll never do.' And so I sat down and did the research and did it myself. So you've got me in there. The English isn't that great, but the thoughts are in there." Not too many people bothered to check. Romney's op-eds got maybe a fraction of the attention lavished on Sarah Palin's Facebook wall posts. No Apology hit No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list, but with two "daggers" indicating bulk orders—and Palin didn't need that. The next time No Apology got written up, it was for tweaks to the paperback version that nudged Romney's domestic policies closer to the Tea Party. My point: Mitt Romney wrote thousands of words about foreign policy before he started farming this stuff out to surrogates. When he starts speaking in Europe and Israel this ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate The GOP's Self-Inflicted Wounds? It's a Weekday, So It's Time for Another Misleading Edit of an Obama Quote Blogging the Human Genome	Advertisement
Manage your newsletters subscription: Unsubscribe | Forward to a Friend | Advertising Information
Ideas on how to make something better? Send an e-mail to slatenewsletter@nl.slate.com. Copyright 2011 The Slate Group | Privacy Policy The Slate Group | c/o E-mail Customer Care | 1350 Connecticut Ave NW Suite 410 | Washington, D.C. 20036