Editor’s Note: Scott Jennings, a CNN contributor, is a former special assistant to President George W. Bush and former campaign adviser to Sen. Mitch McConnell. He is a partner at RunSwitch Public Relations in Louisville, Kentucky. Follow him on Twitter @ScottJenningsKY. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
(CNN)For those of us who worked for Mitt Romney in 2012, his words — his warning, really — about Russia will never fade.
“(Russia) is without question our No. 1 geopolitical foe. They fight for every cause for the world’s worst actors. The idea that he (Obama) has more flexibility in mind for Russia is very, very troubling indeed,” Romney told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on March 26 of that election year, referring to President Barack Obama being caught on a hot mic telling then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that after the election the United States would have more “flexibility,” so long as Obama was re-elected.
Obama would use Romney’s words later as a bludgeoning tool in a debate, mocking him for suggesting that Russia posed a threat to our national security.
“When you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia. Not al Qaeda. You said Russia,” Obama condescended. “And the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”
His riff indicated more interest in delivering a memorized debate quip than in taking seriously the threat Vladimir Putin posed to America.
Of course, Romney was right. Based on everything we know about Russia’s activities in the 2016 election, there is no doubt they meddled. There is doubt about active collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s campaign, and about whether Putin’s efforts changed the election outcome.
In fact, just after the 2016 election, as Obama was leaving office, just 27% of Americans who responded in a survey conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research saw America as more united as a result of Obama’s presidency, versus 44% who said it was more divided.
Obama divided us politically. And Putin, fully aware of Obama’s naiveté on Russia’s geopolitical intentions, took advantage of what Obama was doing to our national unity.
After special counsel Robert Mueller rolled out his indictments of 13 Russians involved in election meddling last week, Trump — among his other, more colorful tweets — arrived at the right question: “Obama was President up to, and beyond, the 2016 Election. So why didn’t he do something about Russian meddling?”
The reason is right in front of our face. Obama simply didn’t take Russia seriously. What he said to Romney at the debate reflected exactly how he viewed the Russian threat; it will be remembered as one of the greatest presidential foreign policy failures in American history.
