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President Barack Obama addresses United Nations
Romney’s speech followed his attack Monday on Obama’s leadership abroad. Romney said the president was minimizing Stevens’ death. He also seized on a comment that Obama made in an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday, in which the president said recent violence in the Mideast was due to “bumps in the road” on the way to democracy.
“I can’t imagine saying something like the assassination of ambassadors is a bump in the road, when you look at the entire context, the assassination, the Muslim Brotherhood president being elected in Egypt, 20,000 people killed in Syria, Iran close to becoming a nuclear nation, that these are far from being bumps in the road,” Romney told ABC television.
White House press secretary Jay Carney called Romney’s accusations “desperate and offensive” in the late stages of a close race that seems to be trending the president’s way.
Romney, under pressure himself from fellow Republicans over the way his campaign is run, said he was shifting to a more energetic schedule of public events, trying to reverse recent erosion in polls of the battleground states likely to decide the election.
The U.S. president is not chosen by popular vote but by state-by-state elections, making states that don’t reliably vote Democrat or Republican important in a tight race.
Obama has gained ground on Romney in recent surveys when potential voters are asked to compare the candidates’ ability to fix the economy. Sluggish growth and national unemployment of 8.1 percent make the economy by far the dominant issue in the race.
Obama also has a lead over Romney when voters are asked which candidate is better equipped to handle foreign policy. The president has not shied away from mentioning his decision to order the secret mission by U.S. forces that killed terrorism mastermind Osama bin Laden in his Pakistani hideout more than a year ago.
