Mitt Romney feels, justifiably, that momentum has shifted in his favor since the first debate in Denver last week. The Republican candidate did not wait for the next debate (to be held October 16) to unveil his foreign policy positions. He presented his views in a speech on Monday at the Virginia Military Institute. Romney has become an initiator and Obama has turned into a responder, an effective strategy for the Republican challenger in his bid to win the election on November 6. A Gallup poll published on Monday showed the two candidates tied and a Rasmussen poll gave Romney a two-point advantage. These polls are representative of the tailwind that has created a new dynamic in the election campaign. Suddenly, people are talking mostly about Romney. Polls have found that voters favor Romney's stances on economic issues. But on foreign policy, the former Massachusetts governor has remained a mystery. Romney's foreign policy speech on Monday allowed him to sound not only like a president, but also like a strong leader, and also enabled him to differentiate himself from the current president. In Virginia, Romney continued the same line he had taken in Denver. The "smiling prosecutor" exposed Obama's failures in Syria, Iran, Libya and also Israel. Romney said that Obama believes in "soft power." Romney himself believes in a classical America that leads the world. Romney wants the United States to regain its lost power. Obama, Romney said, has left "our destiny at the mercy of events." The United States is currently not dictating facts on the ground, certainly not in the Middle East. Obama will talk about the chances of dialogue succeeding in stopping Iran's nuclear project, while Romney will emphasize how close the Iranians are to obtaining a nuclear weapon. Romney's "classical America" will not stand by on the sidelines and watch events in Syria like the current U.S. government is and it will also be more involved in various ways in places like Iran, Libya and Egypt (where respecting the peace agreement with Israel will be a condition for good relations with the U.S.). Romney did give the Obama administration credit for killing Osama bin Laden, but said that "when we look at the Middle East today with Iran closer than ever to nuclear weapons capability, with the conflict in Syria threatening to destabilize the region, with violent extremists on the march, and with an American ambassador and three others dead likely at the hands of al-Qaida affiliates it is clear that the risk of conflict in the region is higher now than when the president took office." The deaths of the four Americans at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi in September has turned into one of the hot issues of the current election campaign. The Obama administration, of course, tried to attribute the attack to a film that insulted the Prophet Muhammad. Romney, on the other hand, has portrayed the Benghazi attack as only the most prominent incident in a wave of anti-America actions in half a dozen countries, mainly in the Middle East, but also in Africa and Asia. Israel was mentioned several times in Romney's speech as the Republican candidate accused Obama of distancing the two countries from each other. The next polls will show whether Romney's speech distanced more voters from Obama.
