ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Using the Osama bin Laden assassination—killing—the great news we had a year ago, in order to say basically that Obama did it and Romney might not have done it, which is really the—which is the message.
GAIL KING: Do you think the president is capitalizing on that?
HUFFINGTON: I don’t think there should be an ad about that. I think it’s one thing to celebrate the fact that they did such a great job. It’s one thing to have an NBC special from the situation room, which we’ll have this week--
CHARLIE ROSE: Brian Williams is doing a who thing, which interviews everybody on the anniversary.
HUFFINGTON: In the Situation Room, which is unprecedented. All of that is perfectly legitimate. But to turn it into a campaign ad is one of the most despicable things you can do. It’s the same thing that Hillary Clinton did with the 3 a.m. call. You know, ‘you’re not ready to be commander in chief.’ It’s also what makes politicians and political leaders act irrationally when it comes to matter of war, because they’re so afraid to be called wimps that they make decisions that are incredibly destructive for the country. I’m sure the president would not have escalated in Afghanistan if he was not as concerned as Democrats are that Republicans are going to use not-escalating against them in a campaign.
KING: But in a campaign aren’t you supposed to tout your accomplishments of what you’ve done?
HUFFINGTON: But this is not what the ad does. What the ad does is question—if we’re talking about the same ad?
ROSE: We are. When President Clinton—
KING: There’s only one.
HUFFINGTON: And then there’s the snippet from Romney in ’07 that is used to imply that Romney would not have been as decisive. There’s no way to know whether Romney would have been as decisive. To actually speculate that he wouldn’t be is to me not the way to run campaigns.