Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has apologized to Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, for mocking him in 2012 when he warned that Russia is the United States’ “number one geopolitical foe,” going so far as to credit the former GOP nominee with being prescient.
Just ignore the part where her newfound appreciation for the Russian threat coincides exactly with the Democratic Party’s ongoing efforts to convince voters that the Kremlin stole the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
“I personally owe an apology to now-Senator Romney, because I think that we underestimated what was going on in Russia,” Albright said this week during her testimony before the House Intelligence Committee. “I was on the CIA external advisory board, there was no question that less money was being put into Russian language and what was going on in Russia.”
“We had forgotten we’re dealing with a KGB agent,” she added, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “I think he has played a weak hand very well. Putin has put them back on the scene.
Thanks, but no thanks, Madame Secretary. That’s a self-serving, nonsense apology if ever I saw one, and not just because it’s a case of “too little, too late.” Her “apology” is not so much about admitting error as it is about leveraging her credentials in service of the Democratic Party’s campaign to pin its 2016 electoral loss on the Russians. Indeed, that Albright’s assessments of Russia have matched up perfectly with Democratic messaging is a detail that should not be ignored.
In 2012, during the presidential election, Democrats turned then-GOP nominee Gov. Romney’s warning about Russia into a punchline.
“The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back,” former President Obama scoffed during a presidential debate. “The Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”
Obama’s allies in politics and news media were pleased as punch with his mocking of Romney. Albright was more than happy to go along with it.
“The statements that Governor Romney makes show little understanding of what is actually going on in the 21st century,” Albright said in an Obama campaign video. “He is not up to date, and that is a very dangerous aspect. That’s just an example of his 20th century approach to 21st century issues.”
Albright was also quoted at the time as characterizing Romney’s remarks as “truly out of date” and “just wrong.”
The thing that’s so maddening about Albright’s decision to back Obama and the Democrats on the “LOL Russia” line is that she should have known better. Unlike the usual Democratic hangers-on and Obama’s slobbering sycophants in the press, Albright is a foreign policy expert. She is a former secretary of state, after all. What is true of Russia today was true in 2012. Putin was running the show, and you’d have to be deaf, blind, or a loyal party operative to not have seen it. Albright should have known Romney was more right than wrong. She should have known better than to giggle in 2012 at the idea of the Russian threat. Yet, she jumped on the mocking bandwagon anyway, going right along with the Obama 2012 re-election script.
It would have been one thing had her ridicule been rooted in the idea that China is actually the U.S.’ “number one geopolitical foe,” which would’ve been an absolutely fair criticism. But she didn’t do that. Albright stuck to the Obama re-election script. She pushed the party line seven years ago, which demanded that all warnings about Russia be treated as a joke. She did this even despite her years of foreign policy expertise.
But that was then. This is now. The 2016 election has come and gone, and the new line from the Democratic Party is: “Actually, Russia is bad.”
And just like that, Albright sees the light.
