On The Daily Show Tuesday night, Jon Stewart summarized the previous night’s “foreign policy” debate along these lines:

  1. Romney, who had spent years calling the Obama Administration’s foreign policy “weak,” now agreed with most of it.
  2. Indeed, the two antagonists expressed almost identical policies, nearly in the same words.
  3. But it’s not a case of Romney coming over to Obama’s side, it’s simply his recognition of what Obama’s record is . . . and that Obama has, in fact, carried on the policies of the Bush Era.

Based on this, Republicans have no grounds to condemn Obama for his foreign policy, unless they condemn their candidate, too.

Romney flip-flopped, here, almost certainly because previously he had been talking to Republican voters, who do not know much about foreign policy and would not fact-check his anti-Obama assertions (and were, after all, bigoted against Obama); last night he had to put away such childish prevarication, because he was talking to everybody, and he couldn’t get away with lying about Obama’s record.

For carrying on Bush’s policies — especially after running against those policies in 2008 — I cannot forgive Obama. For lying about Obama’s policies (up till now), no one should forgive Romney.

On questions of foreign policy and integrity, neither candidate deserves any vote. Not a single one.