Romney's Trip, Its Domestic Positives and a Little Advice

If Mitt Romney’s trip overseas to bolster his foreign affairs credentials was somewhat marred by small missteps - the Olympics comment in London, the culture differences comment in Israel taken very badly by the Palestinians who were its target, and the not so cool ‘shove it’ comment made to the press corps by a Romney staffer in Poland - his trip did have several positive effects, mostly back home in Washington.
First, President Obama chose to sign a bill creating tighter security bonds between the US and Israel while Romney was with Israeli prime minister Netanyahu. This can only be good, but I wonder if it would have been done if Romney had not been applying salt to the Obama-Israel wound while in Jerusalem.
And just today, Obama decided to reinforce US sanctions against Iran. Granted this has been in the works for sometime, but its timing to correspond to the end of Romney’s international trip could be seen as an attempt by the President to upstage any final commentary or position statements coming from the Romney camp.
The Iran sanctions bite into the banking system in Teheran by cutting off from the American banking system any banks that aid Iran by facilitating payments for petroleum-related transactions. The sanctions also include the agreement of several Asian importers of Iranian crude oil to reduce their purchases from Iran.
Contrary to Iran’s predictions, the embargo, which has been in effect in Europe with prohibitions against carrying Iranian oil in European tankers, and is in effect in America since July 1, has produced no shortage of crude oil and the price of crude has actually fallen.
To get back to Romney’s trip, I really do not see the great importance of the gaffs made, if indeed there were any except for the ‘shove off’ comment for which Romney cannot be blamed.
But, these small faux pas do show how important it is to have top notch staff in a presidential campaign. Romney’s staff seems often to be fumbling for the right words, or to be scrambling to catch up and explain their candidate’s mis-phrasing. It is only Romney's full-text speeches that are very well written. So, we may assume that his speechwriters are already among the best in the business.
Mitt Romney has sufficient funding to get the best to run his campaign. He ought to do that now by filling in the weak spots before something happens because of bad phrasing or jittery staff reactions that could really do damage.
And while he’s at it, Mr. Romney could learn from his past mistakes and not try to go it alone, so to speak, when he’s out on the stumps without prepared texts. He needs someone he trusts 100% who will give him a briefing book filled with appropriate comments for every situation. Of course, Romney would have input to the final version of the book, but he needs someone who can say - No, Mitt, that’s not the right approach or wording - and make it stick.
It is usual for a business person to be freer in his off-the-cuff comments, but even there, most CEOs have a staff person who fine tunes the message and the CEO follows it. Mr. Romney was surely no different as a business person. He needs to apply that mindset to his presidential campaign.