Obama's plan to use national security as a campaign cudgel

Privately, Obama allies will make case that Romney and Ryan possess an almost Palin-esque naivete to the world. Publicly, too: Senator John Kerry linked Romney’s comments on Russia as the number one geopolitical threat with Palin’s comment on seeing that country from Alaska. Romney appears “reckless” and “out of touch,” as one campaign official put it. All of this is laying the groundwork for what could be one of the most pivotal moments of the campaign—the final presidential debate, just two weeks before the election. The topic: foreign policy. Though Chicago is already lowering expectations for all the debates, they do feel the president has a clear leg up on this one. President Obama, officials say, can discuss the killing of Bin Laden, ending the war in Iraq, bringing troops home from Afghanistan, the toughest sanctions on Iran so far, and what the foreign policy community perceives as a successful intervention in Libya.

The Romney campaign, however, doesn’t think national security is a winning issue for Obama.

Romney foreign policy advisor Robert O’Brien called the Obama campaign’s tactic a transparent ploy to distract from the sagging economy, including a recent jobs report that was “a disaster for them.”

“It doesn’t surprise me that they’re raising foreign policy because it’s another distraction from the Administration’s terrible economic record,” O’Brien told BuzzFeed. “They’re going from one shiny object to the next.”