Politics & Power Quote by Rick Santorum

Santorum’s line is built to do two jobs at once: shrink a political opponent’s signature win while laundering the speaker’s own party’s legacy. By calling the bin Laden raid “tactical,” he demotes a high-risk, high-payoff operation into mere execution. “Strategic” is the prestige word here, the level where presidents are supposed to be visionary and historically consequential. So Santorum slides the “real” credit backward to George W. Bush: the initial decision to “go after him.” It’s a neat rhetorical reallocation of ownership, turning Obama into the guy who cashed a check someone else wrote.

The subtext is intra-conservative triage. In a Republican primary-era context, Santorum needs to honor Bush-era counterterrorism (often politically radioactive by then) without defending the entire Iraq-Afghanistan project. He does it by isolating one unifying objective - bin Laden - and framing it as the true strategic throughline. Obama’s role becomes managerial, not presidential.

Then comes the scorched-earth closer: “he’s gotten it wrong strategically every single time.” The absolutism isn’t an accidental overreach; it’s a loyalty test for listeners primed to see Obama as fundamentally misguided. Specific policies don’t matter as much as the impression of a pattern. “On his watch” signals commander-in-chief responsibility and hints at global chaos as personal indictment.

It works because it turns complexity into hierarchy: tactics are replaceable, strategy is identity. And if you win tactically but “lose” strategically, the victory can be dismissed as luck, timing, or someone else’s plan.