This would be quite a good response if all we know was that Romney had been approached with a prospect by a former SoS, and had blown her or him off. But we know more than that--we know that Romney considered this episode to be worth an anecdote.
And in that anecdote, he gives no reason why he blew the SoS off, leading a reasonable audience to conclude it was lack of interest. Either he is purposely omitting details in an attempt to make himself look worse, or he just wasn't interested.
It is reasonable to suppose that if he had a different or better reason, he would have shared it. And conversely, since he didn't share it, it is reasonable suppose he didn't have one.
That's a pretty sophisticated analysis to apply to a simple anecdote. It's like, equal parts kremlinology and mystery novel detective. I feel like we should all be gathered in the parlor, smoking pipes and sipping sherry. We'd pore over gazetteers of central Asia, while you revealed to us who
really murdered the Soviet minister.
Seriously, though, I was addressing the slightly narrower claim that declining to engage in a lengthy ad-hoc discussion with a former SoS about mideast policy is an automatic fail and a clear sign of moronism.
If we're going to speculate more broadly (and apparently we are) about what the anecdote means, and what conclusions we can reasonably draw from it... well, then the sky's the limit. For all we know, there never was a phone call from a former SoS. The whole thing could be a simple fiction crafted to make a simple point.
And I think that we are getting a pretty good idea of what that point is: The situation between Israel and Palestine is what it is. It's not really a solvable problem--at least not by any US president--but it's not really a major problem either. So the Romney administration isn't planning to waste a lot of time and effort going through the motions of a bogus "peace process". There's no presidential legacy to be made there, and "former SoS with the prospect of a settlement" doesn't clear the bar for getting serious attention on the subject.
But I can hear it now:
This former secretary of state is different!
This plan is so crazy it just might work!
This president (Romney!) could totally pull this off, if only he were wise enough to
listen! Together, these two could square the circle, find the Northwest Passage, cure cancer, and bring peace to the Middle East! In our time! And he pissed it all away, because when the magic phone call came in, he "didn't want to delve into it"!
