Epic Fail

The Embarrassment Tour Continues

The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Slovak Republic would like for Mitt Romney to mind his own business.

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney attacked President Barack Obama’s administration this week for abandoning Poland and the Czech Republic by altering plans for an American missile defense system in Europe.

But the Slovak foreign minister, in Washington this week for meetings with U.S. officials, said Thursday that Europe has fully embraced the new approach to missile defense and said Mr. Romney was dredging up settled debates.

“People have moved on,” said Miroslav Lajcak, the minister of foreign affairs and deputy prime minister, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “We are in a different situation now. We are discussing a different project. I see no reason to revisit discussions from three years back.”

For the record -- the Obama administration did not "abandon" eastern Europe as Mitt Romney is alleging.

Land-based ballistic missile defense was ruffling too many feathers, thanks in part to arrogant Bush-era saber-rattling and cowboy-ism, so the land-based system was shelved in favor of a sea-based system. The United States is still fully committed to defending eastern Europe from phantom threats.

Meanwhile, even Karl Rove has been forced to admit that Romney's London trip was an embarrassment.

You have to shake your head. Gov. Romney went to the London Olympics at invitation of the International Olympic Committee. It was a great opportunity for him to talk about his experiences, look, he stepped away from the leadership of Bain Capital for three years in order to step in and save the floundering Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 2002. I bet there is lots of stories he could be talking about what a wonderful experience that was and how uplifting and inspiring it was. Instead he got stuck making a, somehow or another that the comments the Brits took as insult, and walked it back pretty quickly and walked it back adroitly but nonetheless the damage was done.

What Rove means to say is that a trip to London is suppose to be the easy part, but he coated it in a thin layer of victim-shaming, blaming the British for being offended by obviously offensive remarks.

If a foreign representative traveled to America and questioned the moral integrity of the entire nation one day before Olympic opening ceremonies, there would be a similar reaction.

Of course Mitt Romney is somewhat unique in that his systems haven't been properly calibrated for diplomacy, or empathy, or compassion, or almost anything, so that's unlikely to occur.