newzealandinc.com Informed. Influential. Indispensable.
President Barack Obama landed a lot of punches in his foreign policy debate with Mitt Romney in Boca Raton, Florida,” says Lowy Institute Executive Director Dr Michael Fullilove.
“But President Obama’s truest line of the night was when he said to Governor Romney: ‘You say you would do the same things we did but you would just say them louder.’”
Despite the fiery performances, the debate revealed the essential similarities in the foreign policies of the two candidates, said Dr Fullilove. In a recently released research paper, The Audacity of Reasonableness: Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, US foreign policy and Australia, Dr Fullilove found that on key issues of US foreign policy, including the war in Afghanistan, the threat of a nuclear Iran, and the US relationship with China, Obama and Romney converge.
“Obama is not as left-wing and dovish as many believe, and Romney is not as right-wing and hawkish as he would have us believe.
“Romney’s rhetoric has been several notches tougher than Obama’s, but his heart is not in it,” says Dr Fullilove.
- Fullilove’s full article can be read here