Romney’s Wide Detour Around Berlin

Mitt Romney can breathe easily again: Angela Merkel has no time for him. When the Republican leaves on his trip, Chancellor Merkel will be enjoying the opening ceremonies of the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth. From there she goes on summer vacation to South Tyrol. Romney’s election team announced no success in scheduling a meeting. Many of Romney’s advisors probably thought: “Thank God!”

The journey, which will take Romney to Great Britain, Israel and Poland, was already a tough enough balancing act. For Romney, it’s a chance to show off his talents as a statesman. But it simultaneously brings up certain challenges in that it requires him to now take positions on issues on which he has been silent thus far during his campaign. He visits Jerusalem at a time when the situation in neighboring Syria is becoming more opaque and tensions with Iran increase. Romney wants to profile himself as a hardliner for his conservative base back in America, but has to avoid giving the impression that he is criticizing President Obama from outside the United States.

There’s no question that Germany would be safer ground for Romney than France would be, a nation many conservatives in America think of as a symbol for every negative cliché they hold about Europe in general: a strong central government with liberal tendencies and an inclination toward snobbishness. A Romney visit to France’s socialist president François Hollande would be out of the question. Besides, the Republican who was once a Mormon missionary in France has no interest in displaying his foreign language skills in front of American voters, who already think American politicians who speak French are suspect. On the other hand, Germany has a conservative government, a strong economy and a chancellor whose biography stands as a victory in the Cold War.

But a visit to Germany by Obama’s challenger would also entail a high wire act with unpredictable consequences. For one thing, his visit would inevitably be compared with Obama’s 2008 visit to Germany, when an enchanted crowd of 200,000 wildly cheered the candidate at Berlin’s Victory Column. For another, Romney would be traveling to a nation Americans are convinced holds the key to the European Union’s currency crisis. Any and every comment he dared make on that subject would be subject to close scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic.

Romney could circumvent the Victory Column comparison with relative ease. After all, what difference would it make to Romney if the Germans favor Obama’s reelection? At home, he’s breathing down Obama’s neck in the polls; this trip is supposed to give the folks back home a demonstration of his gravitas and competence. For weeks, Romney’s advisors have made it known that their candidate wanted to differentiate himself from Obama’s 2008 rock star appearance. The story was that the ex-Massachusetts Governor and business magnate would be traveling in order “to listen and learn.” Of course, they also hope the trip will receive maximum attention in the U.S. media and simultaneously redirect attention away from other issues, such as why the multimillionaire refuses to make his tax returns public. But the dilemma remains: How can a presidential candidate’s foreign journeys be anything but a staged event?

The subject of the euro could become truly touchy. Angela Merkel’s Germany is a nation to which American conservatives feel a strong attraction. They admire the success of Germany’s export economy and consider Merkel almost a modern-day Margaret Thatcher. We can probably also assume that is Mitt Romney’s take on the matter as well. His economics advisor, Glenn Hubbard, came down on Germany’s side this summer during the euro crisis saying that pooling European debt would be the wrong long term fiscal policy. The only problem there is that for Americans — even many conservative Americans — blood is thicker than water. They’re afraid that a shaky euro may endanger the recovery in their own country. That’s why they want the Europeans to do everything in their power to reassure markets in the short term and stimulate their economies.

Romney, who supports the Germans who want to slam on the brakes, runs the risk of looking like a turncoat at home, not to mention that it’s considered beyond the pale to criticize the president from outside national borders. Everything Romney might say in Berlin on the subject of the euro would effectively be turned against him once he goes back home.

There’s one other point that mitigates against a Germany visit by Romney. Romney’s earlier contacts in Germany were almost exclusively connected with his tenure as CEO of Bain Capital. Obama has been using Romney’s record as a financial investor to attack him as a vulture capitalist. A visit to Germany might result in negating another goal of Romney’s European junket: Granting him a respite from that subject.