Foreign junkets often prove undoing of gaffe-inclined politicians

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PC party leader Joe Clark walks back to Parliament Hill after a news conference in Ottawa in 2002. (TOM HANSON / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

When Joe Clark retired from federal politics in 2004, he did so with a record as a skilful cabinet minister and respected statesman. It wasn't always that way. Back in 1976, after Clark, a youthful 36 years old, won the leadership of the federal Progressive Conservative party, he was dismissed in the press as "Joe Who?"

Then, two years later, in an attempt to bolster his foreign policy credentials, he and his team planned a 12-day overseas journey to Japan, India, Israel and Jordan. Twenty journalists opted to accompany Clark and his entourage, ensuring there would be plenty of media coverage.

The trip was a public-relations nightmare, with one gaffe followed by another. Travelling by commercial air, the journalists had their luggage delayed and they naturally blamed Clark. After that, every blunder, every awkward gesture, every convoluted statement that Clark made was played up in reports dispatched to Canada.

Asked to comment in Japan about the situation in Cambodia, he told journalists that he "wouldn't want to be wrongly nuanced." In India, he asked one peasant "what is the totality of your acreage?" He queried another farmer about the age of his chickens. In Israel, he pointed out that "Jerusalem is a very holy city."

All of this contributed to Clark's image as a bumbler who was not ready to be the prime minister. He would recover, and indeed briefly headed a minority government in 1979-80, yet that disastrous trip haunted his reputation for decades.

It was difficult not to think about Clark's 1978 trip while watching Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney visit London, Israel and Poland two weeks ago. Romney's strategy was the same as Clark's had been: to demonstrate to the electorate his presence on the world stage and his deft handling of foreign policy issues (his stop in Israel was also meant to gain more support among American Jewish voters). And like Clark, at least, according to most reports, he stumbled from one country to the next.

In London, Romney questioned the city's preparation for the Summer Olympics. In Israel, he waded into the quagmire of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and while cheered by the Israelis, upset Palestinian officials with his remarks about their lack of culture. In Warsaw, the leaders of Solidarity, the Polish trade union, with whom he met, decried the Republicans' less-than-supportive stand on collective bargaining.

Most recently, in an opinion piece in the New York Times, scientist Jared Diamond criticized Romney for misquoting his well-known book Guns, Germs and Steel. All in all, from the perspective of the American and European journalists covering the trip -- the Washington Post labelled it a "Gaffepalooza" -- Romney showed just how unprepared he was to represent the U.S. around the world.

In the past, such journeys have been at best generally no-win situations -- protocol dictates that during an election campaign a nominee should not publicly criticize a sitting president on a foreign trip -- or they can hurt a candidate's reputation.

Romney should have pondered his own father George's experience. Romney Sr. was the governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969 with an eye on running as the Republican candidate for president in 1968. For a time, he was the front-runner against Richard Nixon, who had lost the 1960 election for president against John F. Kennedy and then was defeated two years later in a bid to be the governor of California. To strengthen his image as a statesman, Romney visited Vietnam in the midst of the war. At first, he sided with President Lyndon Johnson's policy of increased American involvement, but then later backtracked and claimed he had been "brainwashed by government officials" into supporting LBJ. That one ill-advised quip killed his chances and he eventually dropped out of the presidential race that Nixon ultimately won.

Less damaging was a 1971 trip made to Vietnam by South Dakota Senator George McGovern, who hoped to come up with a way to stop the war as a prelude for his presidential run in 1972, which he lost to Nixon. As governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton had minimal foreign policy experience, as did the governor of Texas, George W. Bush, yet both won the presidency.

A standout exception was Barack Obama's visit to the Middle East and Europe during the 2008 campaign, where he was hailed as a conquering hero. Though he was initially criticized for campaigning outside the U.S., the television clips of him speaking before enthusiastic crowds in Berlin and elsewhere erased doubts about his lack of proficiency in foreign policy. That has not happened often.

Presidential nominees are human like the rest of us, and no matter how prepared or polished they are, slip-ups and mistakes are bound to occur. Sometimes voters will overlook these mis-statements and sometimes not. Think of President Jimmy Carter stating in a 1980 debate on foreign policy with his Republican opponent, Ronald Reagan, that he discussed nuclear policy with his 13-year-old daughter Amy. The nation was not amused.

Or Michael Dukakis, the Democratic presidential nominee in 1988, posing in a military uniform on a tank with the intention of boosting his foreign affairs leadership profile. Instead, this "Rambo image" had the opposite effect. Every pundit mercilessly lampooned him.

On the other hand, in August 1984, President Reagan, thinking his radio microphone was turned off, joked about the Soviet Union as the "evil empire." Soviet leaders castigated his "simple-mindedness" and a majority of Americans seriously believed Reagan might start a third world war. Yet, three months later, he easily beat his Democratic challenger, Walter Mondale.

For the most part, the coverage and subsequent commentary about Mitt Romney's trip has been overwhelmingly negative. Last week's cover story in Newsweek magazine suggests he is a "wimp" and questions whether he is "too insecure" to be president.

If his travels to Europe and Israel produce the worst of his gaffes, then the odds are that most Americans will forget about them by election day in early November. A poll conducted by the Pew Research Centre a few months ago indicated that only seven per cent of those asked believed foreign policy issues were the most important problem facing the country, compared to 65 per cent who selected the economy as their No. 1 concern. This might be the main factor working in Romney's favour. As long as a majority of Americans cling to the simplistic notion that Obama is single-handedly responsible for the ups-and-downs of the current volatile economy, then Romney, though clearly the underdog in this election, still has a (very) slim chance of upsetting him.

Now & Then is a column in which historian Allan Levine puts the events of today in an historical context.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 11, 2012 J6