President Obama’s reelection campaign invokes the death of Osama bin Laden in a new web video, contradicting the president’s previous claim that he would not "spike the football" with respect to the terrorist’s demise.
The video uses footage of an interview with former president Bill Clinton from the pro-Obama propaganda film "The Road We’ve Traveled," and suggests that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney would not have ordered the raid that killed bin Laden.
"The commander-in-chief gets one chance to make the right decision," reads the text in the video. "What path would Mitt Romney have taken?"
Shortly following bin Laden’s death in May 2011, Obama told CBS’s Steve Kroft that his administration would not release photos of the dead terrorist because he did not believe in using the occasion to score political points.
"You know, we don't trot out this stuff as trophies," Obama said. "We don't need to spike the football."
In 2008, Obama’s campaign criticized his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton for trying to "invoke bin Laden to score political points" in a campaign advertisement.
"We already have a President who plays the politics of fear, and we don't need another," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement responding to the ad.
The video is not the first instance of the Obama campaign attempting politicize bin Laden’s death. Speaking to a crowd of supporters in New York City yesterday, Vice President Joe Biden implied that Romney would not have killed the 9-11 mastermind.
"If you are looking for a bumper sticker to sum up how President Obama has handled what we inherited, it's pretty simple: Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive," Biden said, invoking the controversial auto-industry bailout.
"You have to ask yourself, if governor Romney had been president, could he have used the same slogan—in reverse? People are going to make that judgment."