Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: Obama is Commander in Chief while Romney plays pretend

_{Visual source: Newseum}

AP:

President Barack Obama answered political taunts with presidential muscle Tuesday, addressing the nation from Kabul as Republicans said he's overdoing the celebration of Osama bin Laden's death one year ago.

The president's secret flight to Afghanistan ' where he signed off on details for withdrawing U.S. troops from the decade-long war there ' was the type of campaign counterpunch that may play out many times in his re-election battle against Republican Mitt Romney.

Every Republican complaint reminds people that Obama got Osama, while Bush failed to do so.

WaPo:

Mitt Romney on Tuesday ate cheese pizza with firefighters and held a news conference to declare that he would be a tough commander in chief.

At the same moment, President Obama was aboard Air Force One on a secret trip to Kabul, putting the finishing touches on an address to the nation marking the first anniversary of the Osama bin Laden raid he oversaw.

The contrast was both a testament to the power of incumbency and a fresh illustration of one of the more difficult challenges Romney confronts as the GOP's presumptive presidential nominee: to press the case that Obama is weak abroad despite having ordered the raid that killed the world's most-hunted terrorist.

There's a simple conclusion: Romney can't pull it off.

Ross Douthat:

Whereas on domestic issues the Romney camp can answer almost every Obama attack by changing the subject to the unemployment rate, on foreign policy the Republican message is much more muddled and uncertain. In the usual order of things, Romney would be simply try to out-hawk the president, but this is not a hawkish moment in American politics. Outside of the most Republican portions of the electorate, the Iraq War is still widely regarded as a bad blunder, and even conservatives are increasingly supportive of a speedy exit from Afghanistan. Public opinion on Iran is unsettled, but there is next to no support for the kind of stepped-up American intervention in Syria that some Republicans have championed.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. (I'll go hunt up all of Douthat's columns about how over the top Bush, Giuliani, Cheney and the Republicans were on this issue from 2001-present. Be back in a few years when I find them. I think they are somewhere in Iraq next to the weapons of mass destruction.)

And on the domestic side, Jennifer Granholm:

No, he didn't! Did Romney's adviser Eric Fehrnstrom really say that President Barack Obama did 'exactly' what Mitt Romney advised on the auto industry?

OK, I admit that I have a particular animus toward a guy that knifed us in the back when Michigan was on its knees. But let's just look at the facts on the auto bailout. It's straightforward.

George E Condon Jr:

In going to Afghanistan and addressing the nation about the state of the decade-long war, President Obama did exactly what Republicans long have been urging him to do. But in doing so on the anniversary of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, he sure didn't do it the way they wanted him to'certainly not if it reminded voters of the single greatest accomplishment of his presidency.

Dana Milbank:

To call this 112th Congress a do-nothing Congress would be an insult ' to the real Do-Nothing Congress of 1947-48. That Congress passed 908 laws. To date, this one has passed 106 public laws. Even if they triple that output in the rest of 2012 ' not a terribly likely proposition ' they will still be in last place going back at least 40 years.

Ian Reifowitz:

Many Americans'in particular those who are white and middle-aged or older'remember growing up in a far more homogeneous place than the present. The sense of mourning for ' and the desire to restore ' that world is powerful, as is the fear of what is to come in the new, far more diverse America. The question is whether politicians choose to exacerbate that fear through divisive rhetoric, or to assuage it with language that seeks to unify us as Americans and encourages us to transcend our differences. Mitt Romney must openly declare which kind of politician he is.

Ian's panel at NN12 (Providence), Promoting People of Color in the Progressive Blogosphere, will run Friday June 8.