What grade does Mitt Romney give President Obama?
"Oh, an F, no question about that.... Across the board," Romney told CBS News in an interview broadcast on Thursday evening.
The presumptive GOP nominee praised Obama for the killing of Osama bin Laden, but faulted the president on a variety of other foreign policy moves.
"I look at the fact that he was looking to have a force of American troops staying in Iraq, securing what had been so won there, with a status of forces agreement. He failed to achieve it," Romney said. "I look at what's happening in the Middle East; the Arab Spring has become the Arab Winter. That's hardly a success. So as I look around the world, I have to believe that his positions in foreign policy have not communicated American strength and resolve."
On the domestic front, Romney repeated his familiar argument that an unemployment rate remaining above 8 percent is unacceptable, especially when the $787 billion stimulus law was intended to drive it down further.
The Obama campaign said that argument has been debunked by numerous fact-checkers because it is based on projections in "a report prepared weeks before the President took office and before even economists knew the depth of the economic recession."
The campaign dismissed Romney's foreign policy critique as "misguided" and "misinformed" in a statement from Tim Roemer, a former congressman, former ambassador to India, and former member of the 9/11 Commission.
Since taking office, Roemer said, Obama has "responsibly ended the war in Iraq; decimated al-Qaeda’s leadership, including Osama bin Laden; is winding down the war in Afghanistan; reduced the threat of nuclear weapons; strengthened our alliances; increased our exports overseas, creating jobs here at home; and led the world in putting crippling sanctions on Iran." He added that "Gov. Romney is out of the mainstream even of his own party on foreign policy."