Jim Geraghty has a strange reaction to news of Biden’s foreign policy attack on Romney this morning:

Does the Obama camp really think that they can win votes against Romney by arguing he’ll be too tough with Putin?

I doubt it. Based on the attack video that the campaign has released ahead of the speech, I assume that one part of Biden’s message will be that Romney’s foreign policy views are outdated and irrelevant for the present. That won’t be hard to do, because some of them are. The other part of the attack will be that Romney’s foreign policy views are otherwise more or less identical to what the Obama administration has been doing, which has required Romney to invent or exaggerate differences to give himself something to attack. There is also a lot of truth to that charge, and it’s something that is hard to miss if one follows Romney’s statements on foreign policy for any length of time.

Jackson Diehl once tried to criticize the Obama administration for having outdated foreign policy priorities more appropriate to the late ’70s or early ’80s, and the Obama campaign seems to have found that line of attack useful against Romney. Of course, Romney made it much easier for them by making a significant unforced error in his statements on Russia. The error has been all the more damaging to Romney because he and his advisers think they are winning the argument.

Romney’s mistaken decision to make foreign policy a major theme of his campaign has left him open to an obvious response that highlights his lack of experience and knowledge on the subject while also drawing attention to his tendency to make things up along the way. Biden will attempt to portray Romney as unprepared for the office and willing to say whatever he has to in order to win. Most people aren’t going to pay attention to Biden’s speech today, but that portrayal of Romney is mostly accurate. More important, many voters are inclined to believe it. The Obama campaign knows that it currently has an advantage with the public on foreign policy, and it seems that they are going to exploit it for all that it’s worth. Romney and his advisers don’t have a good response to this readily available, because they still can’t accept that Republicans are at a disadvantage on these issues for the second consecutive presidential election.