Gibbs: Romney's London Gaffes 'Embarrassing'

The senior adviser to President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign called Mitt Romney’s comments last week about London not being prepared for the Olympics an embarrassment and said they call into question the nominee’s skills at diplomacy.

Robert Gibbs, in an interview on ABC’s “This Week,” said if Romney can’t get it right during a nonpolitical exchange, it leads one to question the outcome of scenarios involving pressing international matters.

Kevin Madden, a senior adviser to Romney, described the comment as a gaffe and said it shouldn’t be taken seriously.

“I would probably give that answer, too, if I hadn’t have flown to London and embarrassed myself in front of our strongest ally in the world,” Gibbs responded. “Look, Mitt Romney wondered aloud whether London was ready for the Olympics, and I think it’s clear that voters in this country wonder aloud whether Mitt Romney’s ready for the world, and I think the world is not yet ready for Mitt Romney.”

Gibbs said the economy will be the deciding factor in what is now a dead-even race for the Oval Office.

“I think what’s going to break this race out, ultimately, is the choice between two candidates and two extremely different visions about how we build this economy and how we come out of the economic disaster that we were in, and how we recover,” he said. “Their economic theory is, we get this economy going by giving millionaires and billionaires more and more tax cuts. That’s not what’s going to get this economy moving.”

Gibbs also criticized Romney’s negative-campaign-ad strategy.

“Mitt Romney had a strategy during the primaries,” he said. “He used negative ads to destroy Rick Perry. He used negative ads to destroy Newt Gingrich. He used negative ads to destroy Rick Santorum. We’re not going to let him play his tried-and-true role as prep-school bully.”