As the New Hampshire primary approaches, a desperate Mitt Romney has emerged as a vocal defender of the foreign policy of George W. Bush. On Sunday, Romney developed a full-blown case of Bush envy, echoing the President's 2001 spaghetti western threat by saying, "I want to get Osama bin Laden dead or alive." To be sure, by alternately downplaying or emphasizing the importance of capturing Bin Laden as political circumstances require, Romney has indeed taken a page straight from the Bush playbook.
In his frantic attempts to fend off Mike Huckabee and John McCain, Romney has tried to differentiate himself from the two occasional critics of Bush foreign policy. Mimicking Bush's unfortunate 2001 comments about an American "crusade," Romney on Sunday proclaimed, "We are doing God's work now, in my opinion by keeping al Qaeda and Hezbollah from establishing a safe haven." He then went on to offer his bounty on Bin Laden:

"I want to get Osama bin Laden dead or alive."

Of course, Romney didn't always feel that way. In April 2007, a more sedate Mitt Romney pooh-poohed the importance of getting Osama Bin Laden:

"It's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person."

But facing withering criticism from his GOP rivals, Romney had a change of heart during a Republican debate just days later. Romney-turned-Rambo declared that his presidency would signal that the end is nigh for Bin Laden:

"He's going to pay, and he will die."

With his flip-flop, Romney was merely following Bush's Iron Law of Bin Laden that states the threat posed by the Al Qaeda chieftain is directly proportional to the threat to the President's political standing.
Trying to fight back the growing public outcry over his illegal domestic wiretapping program in January 2006, President Bush used the Bin Laden bogeyman once again during remarks at the National Security Agency. Bush lashed out at his critics:

"All I would ask them to do is listen to the words of Osama bin Laden and take him seriously. When he says he's going to hurt the American people again, or try to, he means it. I take it seriously, and the people of NSA take it seriously."

Bush, of course, did not take Bin Laden seriously in five years ago. Questioned about his silence regarding Bin Laden in the months following the American failure to capture the Al Qaeda mastermind in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, a nonchalant Bush on March 13, 2002 downplayed his significance:

"So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you...I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him."

Bush may have been embarrassed by his failure to capture Bin Laden in 2002, but by the fall of 2004, he faced the prospect of American voters who seemed to recall the murder of 3,000 of their countrymen. In the third presidential debate with John Kerry, a childlike Bush on October 13, 2004 tried for a "do over" of his statement two and a half years earlier:

"Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations. Of course we're worried about Osama bin Laden."

Which brings us full circle. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, President Bush used the specter of Osama Bin Laden to rally what had been a faltering presidency. In a show of frontier bravado, Bush talked tough about Bin Laden just days after the 9/11 attacks:

"There's an old poster out west, as I recall, that said, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive.'"

George W. Bush, of course, was worried about public approval of his tenure in the White House. Now, Mitt Romney is in a panic about his rapidly diminishing chances of ever getting there. It must be time to worry about Bin Laden again.