Mitt Romney is eyed by pedestrians as he was forced by gridlock traffic to walk from his hotel to the Irish embassy. Photograph: Jason Reed/Reuters
Mitt Romney's campaign is scrambling to limit the damage from his gaffe-strewn visit to London – which has drawn mocking put-downs from the city's mayor and the British prime minister, and "Mitt the twit" headlines in the UK – by saying that Americans don't care what the foreign press prints.
But the attempt to downplay the debacle made little headway in the face of a barrage of critical coverage in the US, which portrayed the Republican presidential candidate as incompetent and undiplomatic, and stinging criticism from American Olympic legend Carl Lewis, who suggested that Romney should not be allowed to travel abroad.
Senior Democrats accused Romney of embarrassing the US and himself and said that press criticism wasn't limited to foreign newspapers. The New York Daily News called Romney's visit to the UK "flub-filled".
The image is somewhat that he's not ready for prime time. It's London for God's sakes. You have to try to mess up a foreign debut in Great Britain if you're an American candidate for president. It looks terrible. He was a gaffe machine. It wasn't just a single gaffe. Every time he opened his mouth he created another gaffe," he said. "It's late July. The memory of it will be wiped out by the Olympics, the vice-presidential choice and the [Republican] convention. But does it play into the dilemma Americans have in this election? Yes. They're very dissatisfied with President Obama's economic performance but they're not at all sure that Romney's the kind of president that they want or need."
But the attempt to downplay the debacle made little headway in the face of a barrage of critical coverage in the US, which portrayed the Republican presidential candidate as incompetent and undiplomatic, and stinging criticism from American Olympic legend Carl Lewis, who suggested that Romney should not be allowed to travel abroad.
Senior Democrats accused Romney of embarrassing the US and himself and said that press criticism wasn't limited to foreign newspapers. The New York Daily News called Romney's visit to the UK "flub-filled".
The image is somewhat that he's not ready for prime time. It's London for God's sakes. You have to try to mess up a foreign debut in Great Britain if you're an American candidate for president. It looks terrible. He was a gaffe machine. It wasn't just a single gaffe. Every time he opened his mouth he created another gaffe," he said. "It's late July. The memory of it will be wiped out by the Olympics, the vice-presidential choice and the [Republican] convention. But does it play into the dilemma Americans have in this election? Yes. They're very dissatisfied with President Obama's economic performance but they're not at all sure that Romney's the kind of president that they want or need."
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