On Mon­day evening, we wit­nessed the third and final debate between Pres­i­dent Obama and for­mer Gov­er­nor Rom­ney. Per­haps the most strik­ing thing about it was how often the Repub­li­can can­di­date sup­ported the poli­cies of the Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­dent. One might think there was lit­tle, if any, day­light between them, almost as if Rom­ney would, in an emer­gency, have the President’s back.

Let’s look at a few high­lights of that debate, and see where the dif­fer­ences lie in a few impor­tant issues. Lest I be accused of mak­ing things up, be aware that I’m tak­ing these excerpts from the full tran­script of the debate as pro­vided by FOX News.

First, on the ques­tion of Amer­i­can with­drawal from Afghanistan, our longest-​​running war, Rom­ney said:

Well, we’re going to be fin­ished by 2014, and when I’m Pres­i­dent, we’ll make sure we bring our troops out by the end of 2014. The com­man­ders and the gen­er­als there are on track to do so. …

We’ve seen progress over the past sev­eral years. The surge has been suc­cess­ful and the train­ing pro­gram is pro­ceed­ing apace. There are now a large num­ber of Afghan Secu­rity Forces, 350,000 that are ready to step in to pro­vide secu­rity and we’re going to be able to make that tran­si­tion by the end of 2014.

So our troops will come home at that point.

He cer­tainly seemed to be declar­ing a date by which our troops would be gone. I sup­pose one could make the argu­ment that he didn’t say it would be a good idea, just that he was promis­ing to do it. On the mat­ter of a set­ting a firm with­drawal date, Sen­a­tor Rob Port­man (R-​​OH) con­firmed Mon­day night that Rom­ney has “always said that it shouldn’t be pub­licly announced because it helps our ene­mies…” Pre­sum­ably, how­ever, there’s a good rea­son for help­ing our ene­mies in this par­tic­u­lar case. Port­man also said, “I thought when Gov­er­nor Rom­ney [agreed with Pres­i­dent Obama], it was refresh­ing to a lot of unde­cided vot­ers who are tired of the attacks back and forth and the pol­i­tics. Look, when Gov­er­nor Rom­ney thought the Pres­i­dent was right, he said so.” The polit­i­cal ben­e­fit from mak­ing vot­ers feel bet­ter clearly mat­ters more than help­ing America’s ene­mies, in the minds of elected Republicans.

Let’s look briefly at Israeli-​​Palestinian rela­tions. Rom­ney had this to say Mon­day night:

Is — are Israel and the Pales­tini­ans closer to reach­ing a peace agreement?

No, they haven’t had talks in two years. We have not seen the progress we need to have, and I’m con­vinced that with strong lead­er­ship and an effort to build a strat­egy based upon help­ing these nations reject extrem­ism, we can see the kind of peace and pros­per­ity the world demands.

This cer­tainly is no ring­ing endorse­ment of any­thing like a two-​​state solu­tion, but it just as cer­tainly is a state­ment of sup­port for some kind of nego­ti­ated peace process. On May 17 of this year, in a secretly-​​taped meet­ing with pri­vate donors, Rom­ney expressed a belief that peace between the two was not pos­si­ble, insist­ing Pales­tini­ans have “no inter­est what­so­ever in estab­lish­ing peace, and that the path­way to peace is almost unthink­able to accom­plish.” He went on to say, “I look at the Pales­tini­ans not want­ing to see peace any­way, for polit­i­cal pur­poses, com­mit­ted to the destruc­tion and elim­i­na­tion of Israel, and these thorny issues, and I say there’s just no way.” One must won­der then why he was crit­i­cal on Mon­day night of there hav­ing been so lit­tle progress toward a nego­ti­ated set­tle­ment. Per­haps this, too, is what he believed vot­ers wanted to hear.

On the mat­ter of drone attacks in Pak­istan and other places, Rom­ney was asked Mon­day night by the mod­er­a­tor, Bob Schi­ef­fer, “ … let me ask you, Gov­er­nor, because we know Pres­i­dent Obama’s posi­tion on this, what is — what is your posi­tion on the use of drones?” The for­mer Gov­er­nor answered,

Well I believe we should use any and all means nec­es­sary to take out peo­ple who pose a threat to us and our friends around the world. And it’s widely reported that drones are being used in drone strikes, and I sup­port that and entirely, and feel the Pres­i­dent was right to up the usage of that tech­nol­ogy, and believe that we should con­tinue to use it, to con­tinue to go after the peo­ple that rep­re­sent a threat to this nation and to our friends. But let me also note that as I said ear­lier, we’re going to have to do more than just going after lead­ers and — and killing bad guys, impor­tant as that is.

I couldn’t find a prior posi­tion from Rom­ney on the use of drones. But we have here some clear sup­port for Pres­i­dent Obama — undoubt­edly, as Sen­a­tor Port­man said, because Rom­ney is con­vinced the Amer­i­can pub­lic wants agree­ment rather than ran­cor. But inter­est­ingly, Rom­ney seems to want some­thing of a gen­tler tone, as if use of drones was going per­haps a bit too far. We shouldn’t merely be “killing bad guys.” Romney’s answer here prompted the Wash­ing­ton Post’s Craig Whit­lock to com­ment, “It is strik­ing to hear the Repub­li­can can­di­date advo­cate for a par­al­lel, softer approach to com­bat­ing ter­ror­ism while crit­i­ciz­ing the Demo­c­rat for embrac­ing an overly mil­i­taris­tic strategy.”

It seems almost as if Repub­li­cans are ready to become the party of peace­ful doves, spread­ing love and flow­ers, as opposed to the strong and mil­i­tant Democ­rats, who are all about using America’s aggres­sive might to spread democ­racy through the world.

Speak­ing of Pak­istan, Rom­ney was quick to defend the Pres­i­dent on his involve­ment there, even mak­ing sure noth­ing Rom­ney said would be inad­ver­tently taken as criticism:

I can tell you at the same time, that we will make sure that we look at what’s hap­pen­ing in Pak­istan, and rec­og­nize that what’s hap­pen­ing in Pak­istan is going to have a major impact on the suc­cess in Afghanistan. And I say that because I know a lot of peo­ple that feel like we should just brush our hands and walk away.

And I don’t mean you, Mr. Pres­i­dent, but some peo­ple in the — in our nation feel that Pak­istan is being nice to us, and that we should walk away from them. But Pak­istan is impor­tant to the region, to the world and to us, because Pak­istan has 100 nuclear war­heads and they’re rush­ing to build a lot more. They’ll have more than Great Britain some­time in the — in the rel­a­tively near future.

That Pak­istan is a nuclear armed state and may at some future time build more nuclear weapons clearly implies, to the for­mer Gov­er­nor, that we should indeed con­tinue the President’s course of engage­ment there, and not “walk away” as “a lot of peo­ple” have urged. It is very good to see the Repub­li­can can­di­date giv­ing such a full-​​throated defense of the poli­cies of his sup­posed rival.

Another area of wide agree­ment is to be found in dis­cussing Egypt. Schi­ef­fer asked, “Gov­er­nor Rom­ney, I want to hear your response to that, but I would just ask you, would you have stuck with Mubarak?” This ques­tion would have given Rom­ney a chance to dif­fer­en­ti­ate him­self, and to stand behind a long-​​time Amer­i­can ally, now-​​deposed for­mer dic­ta­tor. Romney’s answer?

No. I believe, as the pres­i­dent indi­cated, and said at the time that I sup­ported his — his action there. … once it exploded, I felt the same as the Pres­i­dent did, which is these free­dom voices and the streets of Egypt, where the peo­ple who were speak­ing of our prin­ci­ples and the Pres­i­dent Mubarak had done things which were unimag­in­able and the idea of him crush­ing his peo­ple was not some­thing that we could pos­si­bly support.

Let me step back and talk about what I think our mis­sion has to be in the Mid­dle East and even more broadly, because our pur­pose is to make sure the world is more — is peace­ful. We want a peace­ful planet. We want peo­ple to be able to enjoy their lives and know they’re going to have a bright and pros­per­ous future, not be at war. That’s our purpose.

Once more, not only agree­ing with the Pres­i­dent, but stress­ing his own con­vic­tion that Amer­ica should be a force for love and peace, not a nation that should “be at war.” Speak­ing in Feb­ru­ary of this year, Rom­ney was more crit­i­cal of the Pres­i­dent, and refused to call Mubarak a “dic­ta­tor”. This cer­tainly is a ques­tion as least as seri­ous as whether Pres­i­dent Obama called the attacks on Libya “acts of ter­ror”, is it not? No mat­ter. The pub­lic, appar­ently, wanted a softer, gen­tler Rom­ney, and he was eager to oblige.

On another mat­ter, one com­men­ta­tor noted yesterday,

Rom­ney said Mon­day, “We don’t want another Iraq.” He said it in the con­text of diplo­matic efforts to con­vince Mus­lims to aban­don rad­i­cal­ism. He seems to be admit­ting that the Iraq War was an error. But in 2003, Rom­ney sup­ported the Iraq War.

The new, improved, peace­ful Rom­ney was cer­tainly on dis­play Mon­day night, as in his com­ments on Iran:

It is also essen­tial for us to under­stand what our mis­sion is in Iran, and that is to dis­suade Iran from hav­ing a nuclear weapon through peace­ful and diplo­matic means. And crip­pling sanc­tions are some­thing I called for five years ago, when I was in Israel, speak­ing at the Her­zliya Con­fer­ence. I laid out seven steps, crip­pling sanc­tions were num­ber one. And they do work. You’re see­ing it right now in the econ­omy. It’s absolutely the right thing to do, to have crip­pling sanc­tions. I would have put them in place ear­lier. But it’s good that we have them.

“Through peace­ful and diplo­matic means.” The “crip­pling sanc­tions” that the Pres­i­dent has put in place “do work. You’re see­ing it right now in the econ­omy. It’s absolutely the right thing to do.” There is, per­haps, an implied crit­i­cism here of Pres­i­dent Obama for not hav­ing put the sanc­tions in place “five years ago” — long before he became Pres­i­dent, not to men­tion the neces­sity of need­ing to get the rest of the world to par­tic­i­pate, since one sin­gle coun­try impos­ing sanc­tions would have no effect what­ever — but the Pres­i­dent most assuredly is doing the right thing now, and Obama has Romney’s full support.

Gone, and appar­ently con­signed to the dust­bin of his­tory, is the old Rom­ney, who said in March that the Ira­ni­ans “have to under­stand that we will take mil­i­tary, kinetic action if they con­tinue to pur­sue a nuclear option.” Now, it’s all about “peace­ful and diplo­matic means” and “crip­pling sanc­tions” which are cer­tainly “work­ing” and are “absolutely the right thing to do.”

Per­haps Romney’s new bro­mance can be summed up by the begin­ning of his answer on Amer­i­can rela­tions with Israel:

Well, first of all, I want to under­score the same point the pres­i­dent made which is that if I’m Pres­i­dent of the United States, when I’m Pres­i­dent of the United States, we will stand with Israel.

It’s all about giv­ing vot­ers what they want, and in mat­ters of for­eign pol­icy, vot­ers cer­tainly want Pres­i­dent Obama. So Rom­ney has ded­i­cated him­self to giv­ing them exactly that.

And why should he not? Up until now. Rom­ney and his Vice Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, Paul Ryan, have been stand­ing with Repub­li­cans who have claimed that Obama has “wors­ened” American’s rela­tions with the rest of the world, that Amer­ica has “lost respect” in the eyes of other nations. It seems, how­ever, that they may have been mis­taken. A BBC poll, released on Mon­day, sur­vey­ing 22,000 peo­ple in 21 coun­tries finds Pres­i­dent Obama pre­ferred over Gov­er­nor Rom­ney by 50 per­cent to 9 per­cent (only 16 per­cent had no opin­ion, show­ing how deeply the rest of the world cares about Amer­i­can politics).

Despite (or per­haps because of) Romney’s mis­sion­ary work in France, the French pre­fer Obama over Rom­ney by a whop­ping 72 per­cent to two per­cent. Canada likes the Pres­i­dent over the Gov­er­nor by a mar­gin of 66 to nine. Even China prefers Pres­i­dent Obama, though by a mere 28 to nine.

Rom­ney got over 20 per­cent sup­port exactly nowhere. Sur­pris­ingly, the place he did best was Kenya (!) with 18 per­cent to Obama’s 66 per­cent. Rom­ney was pre­ferred in pre­cisely one nation — Pak­istan would rather have him as America’s pres­i­dent, by a less-​​than-​​ringing endorse­ment of 14 to 11. (It’s worth not­ing, per­haps, that while Rom­ney did not any­where break 20 per­cent, nowhere did Obama fall below 20 per­cent but in Pak­istan; the next two low­est scores were China and Malaysia, tied at 28 percent.)

Of course, for­eign­ers don’t vote in Amer­ica, but the poll puts Amer­i­can for­eign pol­icy under Obama into some per­spec­tive. Per­haps Gov­er­nor Romney’s per­for­mance on Mon­day night does as well. This is not to say that the two can­di­dates agreed on all mat­ters. Still, the major dif­fer­ences seemed to be between Rom­ney and a for­mer Rom­ney from weeks past. Since the President’s poli­cies are “absolutely the right thing to do,” it would make sense to keep him in charge of run­ning them for the next four years.

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