New Obama campaign video highlights decision to launch bin Laden raid

Four days before the anniversary of the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a new video from the Obama campaign focusing on the presidential decision-making that was critical to the mission's success:

The video begins with previously unreleased footage of President Clinton talking about the political risk President Obama took in ordering the raid. A failed mission, Clinton said, "would have been horrible for him, but he reasoned 'I cannot in good conscience do nothing.' He took the harder and more honorable path, and the one that produced, in my opinion, the best result."

The video then contrasts Obama's decisive leadership with Mitt Romney's blasé attitude towards bringing bin Laden to justice. "Which path would Mitt Romney have taken?" the video asks before transitioning to a quote from an August, 2007 article about Romney's criticism of Obama's willingness to strike targets inside Pakistan without or without the Pakistani government's assistance. Next, a quote from Mitt Romney himself: "It's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person."

The video closes by returning to President Obama's decision. "He had to decide," President Clinton says. "And that's what you hire the president to do. You hire a president to make the calls when no one else can do it."

At just under 90 seconds, this isn't a video we're going to see on air as a television ad in its entirety, but you can imagine at least three different types of spots that could be made from it next fall: a purely positive ad focused on President Obama's decisiveness despite the political risks; a purely negative one chronicling Romney's well-documented opposition to the path President Obama took; and a contrast spot, comparing the two.

This won't be an issue Republicans will want to talk about. They'll claim that it's absurd to raise questions about what Mitt Romney would have done, arguing that any president would have done the same thing. But that's not true, according to Mitt Romney himself'in his own words.

And this wasn't an easy call, it came with plenty of political risk, yet President Obama made it because it was the right thing to do. The fact that Romney allies like Karl Rove have resorted to lying about that fact is a big clue to how weak they think their position really is.

Republicans will also claim that the only reason President Obama finally brought bin Laden to justice is that he embraced Bush's philosophy on the war on terror. You know, like killing bin Laden and ending the war in Iraq. Which is almost exactly the same as what Bush did ... if Bush had been smart enough to embrace Barack Obama's approach.