By Mr Obama’s own lights, of course, there are plenty more failures to add to his account. He did not, as he promised, halt the rise of the oceans, or close the prison camp at Guantánamo within a year of taking office, or bring about peace between Israel and Palestine, or forge a better relationship with the Muslim world, despite the eloquence of his Cairo speech. But it will be hard for Mr Romney to gain much traction on any of these, since they are not objectives that he appears to share.
Anyway, Mr Romney’s trip will probably make very little difference to the battle being played out in America. Foreign policy matters less in this contest than in any in living memory. For that, blame the recession and the agonisingly weak recovery, and also the fact that in today’s multipolar world, American leadership counts for much less than it used to.

The Economist: Mitt Romney abroad. Gaffes and choices

Dazu auch die wie immer sehenswerte Interpretation von Jon Stewart in The Daily Show:

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