Late last week Mittens blabbed that he had met privately in San Francisco with the Australian foreign minister, Bob Carr. And in this private meeting, Carr had told him the rest of the world sees America in decline. When I read this, I remember thinking this is the last time a foreign leader would tell Mittens anything in confidence. But it turns out Carr probably didn’t say anything of the sort. The Sydney Morning Herald reports:
So imagine Senator Carr’s surprise when he gets off the plane tomorrow to find out that Governor Romney has been using the meeting as political ammunition against his presidential rival.
According to the Republican presidential hopeful, Senator Carr also touched on America’s economic vulnerabilities during their chat.
“I met today with the Foreign Minister of Australia. He said something, and I said ‘Can I quote you?’ and he said yes. He said, ‘America is just one budget deal away from ending all talk of America being in decline,”’ Governor Romney told attendees at a fundraiser today.
”And this idea of America in decline, it was interesting [Carr] said that, he led the talk of America being in decline. See that’s not talk we hear about here as much as they’re hearing there. And if they’re thinking about investing in America, entrepreneurs putting their future in America, if they think America’s in decline they’re not gonna do it.”
The repeated comments can be seen as a not-so veiled attack on US President Barack Obama and his handling of the economy.
Carr says he said no such thing. Of course, Carr’s denials could be disingenuous. Maybe he said what Romney says he said, but didn’t expect the remarks to become public and is now walking the comment back to smooth over relations with this U.S. But now people who know something about Australian politics and Mr. Carr are saying there is no way Carr said what Mittens says he said.
In Australia, there is no political party as extreme as the modern GOP and Carr is a member of the Labor Party, which is the more left wing of our two party system and well to the left of the Democratic Party. He could never say so, but Bob Carr will be hoping for an Obama victory in November. Third, Carr is a seasoned and wily politician, who rarely uses words loosely. He was the longest serving Premier of NSW, our most populous state. He would have been very careful about what he said to Romney.
Like most Australians, he probably does think that America is in decline (not irreversibly, but the evidence is pretty clear), but there is no way he would say that to a conservative politician on US soil. His account of what he said to Romney is likely to be accurate. Finally, Carr knows more about US politics than most American politicians. I’m serious. He is a charter member of the Charles A Arthur Society. Carr did not blithely stumble into US domestic politics in the way Romney suggested.
Romney picked the wrong guy to use as a political pawn.
Except that Romney will no doubt work the “America is in decline” story into his stump speech, and will repeat it ad nauseum until the convention, because that’s the kind of guy he is — a serial liar.
But I’m going to toss out one other possibility, which is that Mitt is correctly describing what he heard Bob Carr say. That’s not to say Bob Carr said what Mittens said he said; it’s that Mittens hears what he wants to hear. Incoming data are scrambled to fit Mitt’s views as soon as they enter his brain.
So it’s entirely possible that Mittens took Bob Carr’s words and imposed his own opinions onto them, his primary opinion being that he, the Glorious Mittens, is all-wise and uniquely qualified to lead America out of whatever darkness he sees it in.
This leads us into the metaphysical question of whether Mittens is actually lying if he believes what he says to be true. Whatever. Either way, the thought of Mittens in the White House ought to scare the stuffing out of all of us.
