What Romney forgot in Poland

The American press, always anxious to cover itself, is boiling over about the rudeness of a Mitt Romney press aide to the cordoned reporters during a visit to the war memorial in Poland.

Without wanting in any way to excuse the rudeness, the Romney-ites have a point on the merits:  this was not the time or place for aggressive (and pretty stupid) press questions.  Better for the journalists to write about how Romney is avoiding press questions during this trip than to embarrass themselves by trying to ask them at the wrong place and time.

More interesting was Romney’s “foreign policy speech” in Warsaw.  The foreign policy content is minimal and by now expected:  Romney once again relies on appeals to will and inspiration as the deciding factors in history.  He likes our friends and despises our enemies but gives no clear idea how he would handle the latter, except through military strength.   How that works with Belarus I have no idea.

The more important message is about domestic policy:

The world should pay close attention to the transformation of Poland’s economy. A march toward economic liberty and smaller government has meant a march toward higher living standards, a strong military that defends liberty at home and abroad, and an important and growing role on the international stage.

Rather than heeding the false promise of a government-dominated economy, Poland sought to stimulate innovation, attract investment, expand trade, and live within its means. Your success today is a reminder that the principles of free enterprise can propel an economy and transform a society.

At a time of such difficulty and doubt throughout Europe, Poland’s economic transformation over these past 20 years is a fitting turn in the story of your country. In the 1980s, when other nations doubted that political tyranny could ever be faced down or overcome, the answer was, “Look to Poland.” And today, as some wonder about the way forward out of economic recession and fiscal crisis, the answer once again is “Look to Poland”.

Unfortunately for Romney, the Solidarity trade union that had the inspiration and will to challenge the Polish Communist regime does not agree with Romney’s anti-union stances or its former leader’s endorsement of him.

What we’ve got here is a blatant attempt to get the United States to follow a Polish model to prosperity, ignoring the obvious differences in starting points.  The United States has nowhere near the government-dominated economy that Poland had in the late 1980s.  Nor would Romney like to hear, I suppose, that Poland has a national health care system:

To obtain free health services you have to be insured by a health care provider that has contracts with the regional branch of the National Health Fund (Narodowy Fundusz Zdrowia, NFZ)….Polish citizens, permanent residents in Poland as well as employees of Polish companies need to be insured with a Polish health insurance.

I don’t regard having a national health care system as an infringement on freedom, but the post-Massachusetts Romney does.  Funny he didn’t mention Poland’s compulsory national insurance in his paean to the Polish model.