Bin Laden death presents Romney with a challenge in hitting Obama’s security record

Mitt Romney on Tuesday ate cheese pizza with firefighters and held a news conference to declare that he would be a tough commander in chief.

At the same moment, President Obama was aboard Air Force One on a secret trip to Kabul, putting the finishing touches on an address to the nation marking the first anniversary of the Osama bin Laden raid he oversaw.

The contrast was both a testament to the power of incumbency and a fresh illustration of one of the more difficult challenges Romney confronts as the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee: to press the case that Obama is weak abroad despite having ordered the raid that killed the world’s most-hunted terrorist.

So far, Romney is responding to the challenge in a nuanced manner. Flanked by former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani on the sidewalk outside a firehouse that lost 11 first responders on Sept. 11, 2001, Romney first congratulated Obama for authorizing the attack on bin Laden. Read more.......