Obama Trumpets Killing of Bin Laden, and Critics PounceBy PETER BAKER and MICHAEL D. SHEAR
WASHINGTON — Presidents running for re-election typically boast of programs they created, people they helped or laws they signed. They talk about rising test scores or falling deficits or expanding job rolls. President Obama is increasingly taking the unusual route of bragging about how he killed a man.
To be sure, that man was Osama bin Laden, and he is not mourned among either the president’s supporters or detractors. But in the days leading up to the first anniversary of the raid that finally caught up to the Qaeda mastermind, Mr. Obama has made a concerted, if to some indecorous, effort to trumpet the killing as perhaps the central accomplishment of his presidency.
Mr. Obama has used the rarefied setting of the Situation Room to give an interview about how he made the decision to send in Special Operations forces. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. gave a speech saying the re-election slogan would be “Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.” The president’s campaign released a Web video showing former President Bill Clinton praising Mr. Obama’s fortitude, as it questioned whether Mitt Romney would have made the same decision.
Other presidents have boasted of their toughness, of course, notably Mr. Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, who campaigned for re-election in 2004 on a record of having deposed Saddam Hussein in Iraq, while his vice president, Dick Cheney, warned that electing John Kerry could lead to a terrorist attack. But few presidents have talked about the killing of an individual enemy in such an expansive way.
No doubt, the raid on a house in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a year ago Tuesday is a more favorable story for the president politically than the latest report showing slowing economic growth. With the general election effectively under way, it is part of an effort by both sides to define Mr. Obama’s presidency.
Senator John McCain of Arizona, Mr. Obama’s Republican opponent four years ago, lashed out at the Web video, saying the president was turning “the one decision he got right into a pathetic, political act of self-congratulation.” He added, “Shame on Barack Obama for diminishing the memory of September 11th and the killing of Osama bin Laden by turning it into a cheap political attack ad.”Heading into a weekend in which Mr. Obama will appear with the comedian Jimmy Kimmel before a star-studded crowd at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, Mr. Romney and his allies once again tried to turn Mr. Obama’s own celebrity against him.
A Web video released this week by American Crossroads, a Republican “super PAC,” made the case that the president’s focus on image had preoccupied him from more important issues, mocking his mingling with the stars, including his “slow-jamming the news” with Jimmy Fallon on “Late Night” this week.
“Four years ago, America elected the biggest celebrity in the world, and Americans got one cool president,” the video says amid grim images and statistics on out-of-work recent college graduates. “But after four years of a celebrity president, is your life any better?”
The Romney team amplified the message on Friday in a memorandum from the campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, arguing that Mr. Obama was counting on “his winning TV persona” for re-election. “This election will be decided by adults casting their ballots in their precincts, not teenagers texting votes from in front of their television sets,” Mr. Rhoades wrote. “That apparently frightens the president and his advisers.”
The contrast between the two campaign videos could not be starker. Set to ominous music and narrated by Mr. Clinton, the Bin Laden video describes the life-or-death stakes that confronted Mr. Obama and shows him standing silhouetted in front of an Oval Office window, shouldering the burdens of a nation.
The ad then presents Mr. Romney as if he were the one not ready to lead, saying, “Which path would Mitt Romney have taken?”
Claiming public credit for national security victories has long been a balancing act for presidents. Mr. Bush was criticized when a Republican ad showed pictures of ground zero.
Mr. Obama has been finding ways of talking about the Bin Laden raid for months. When a reporter asked in December about charges that he was appeasing the nation’s enemies, Mr. Obama offered a strikingly blunt retort. “Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 out of 30 top Al Qaeda leaders who have been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement,” he said. “Or whoever’s left out there about that.”
He then cited his leadership in the Bin Laden raid both in the opening passages of his State of the Union address in January and again in the closing sections, always making sure to credit the military and intelligence agencies. But the focus has intensified with the approach of the anniversary. On Thursday, he gave an interview to Brian Williams of NBC News in the Situation Room.
Tony Fratto, a deputy press secretary under Mr. Bush, said that it was “unseemly” to use the room for such a purpose. “I don’t believe it ever would have occurred to us to conduct an interview in the Situation Room,” he said, “and don’t believe we would have considered it appropriate.”
Joshua Earnest, Mr. Obama’s deputy press secretary, said the White House was responding to news media requests. “There certainly is interest around the one-year anniversary, so I’d be surprised if nobody asked about it in the context of the one-year anniversary,” he said.
Martha Joynt Kumar, a Towson University specialist in presidential communication, said it was not surprising that Mr. Obama would use the Situation Room to argue his case. “When they are running for re-election, presidents favor discussions of their successes,” she said. “The killing of Bin Laden is a natural item for President Obama to highlight.”
The anniversary has rekindled some of the longstanding debates about the methods that Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama have used to combat terrorism. Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., a former top Central Intelligence Agency official, defended the harsh interrogations of prisoners under Mr. Bush by contrasting them with Mr. Obama’s use of drones to kill suspected terrorists.
“How could it be more ethical to kill people rather than capture them?” he asked in a segment taped for Sunday’s episode of “60 Minutes” on CBS.
An official familiar with a still-incomplete investigation by the Democratic staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee said the evidence did not support Mr. Rodriguez’s assertion that the rough methods, widely condemned as torture, were necessary.
