At dear old Wooddale High School, in Memphis, TN, in 1976, I had my first speaking part in a theatrical production, as one of the night watchmen in Charles Dicken’s epic tale of redemption, “A Christmas Carol” (1843).

Little did I know, at the time, that I would perform in 9 Dinner Theaters as I got older, singing and dancing, and acting the part of comic relief in the productions (who woulda thunk it?).

But, I digress…

In a classic scene, two men approach the miserly Ebeneezer Scrooge in an attempt to solicit funds for the impoverished of London:

…“a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?”

“Nothing!” Scrooge replied.

“You wish to be anonymous?”

“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned: they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there.”

“Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.”

“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides — excuse me — I don’t know that.”

“But you might know it,” observed the gentleman.

“It’s not my business,” Scrooge returned. “It’s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people’s. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!”

Little did Charles Dickens know that, almost 200 years later, the United States of America would have a President as callous toward the murder of an Ambassador he chose, as Scrooge was toward the suffering of the poor.

The Wall Street Journal has the story:

Mitt Romney accused President Barack Obama on Monday of downplaying recent foreign crises as he seeks to gain an edge on foreign policy – a relative area of strength for the president.

President Barack Obama was assessing his support for the governments that have sprung up in the wake of the Arab Spring when he argued in a 60 Minutes interview that aired Sunday that “I was pretty certain and continue to be pretty certain that there are going to be bumps in the road.”

“Bumps in the road?” Mr. Romney said Monday as he sized up Mr. Obama’s interview performance and rattled off examples of tumult abroad. “We had an ambassador assassinated…twenty thousand people have been killed in Syria. We have tumult in Pakistan and of course Iran is that much closer to having the capacity to build a nuclear weapon. These are not bumps in the road, these are human lives.”

While Mr. Romney has been a regular critic of Mr. Obama’s foreign policies, that’s rarely been truer than in the last few weeks. Amid uprisings in the Middle East that led to the death of an American ambassador, Mr. Romney’s team blasted out a statement that caused a blowback even from conservatives who saw it as inappropriately timed.

Mr. Romney’s team has embraced his sharp tone as a winning strategy to help them contrast with Mr. Obama. Some 45% of registered voters said Mr. Obama would be a better commander in chief, compared with 38% who said Mr. Romney would, in a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

But there are signs that Middle East turmoil has eaten into Mr. Obama’s credibility on the issue. In the recent poll, 49% of voters said they approved of the president’s handling of foreign policy, a five point drop from August.

“This is time for a president who will shape events in the Middle East, not just be…at the mercy of the events of the Middle East,” Mr. Romney said Monday at his rally on a tarmac here in Pueblo.

The Obama campaign said Mr. Romney was taking the president’s words out of context. Lis Smith, a spokeswoman for the Obama campaign, said: “He’s purposely misinterpreting the president’s words and making reckless statements about the death of four Americans in Libya, apparently for the sole purpose of his own political gain. Using this incident to launch political attacks should be beneath someone seeking to be our nation’s Commander-in-Chief.”

The Democrats also noted that Mr. Obama was referring to the climate in the Middle East more broadly and not specifically addressing recent events in Libya or Benghazi.

“There will probably be some times where we bump up against some of these countries and have strong disagreements, but I do think that over the long term we are more likely to get a Middle East and North Africa that is more peaceful, more prosperous and more aligned with our interests,” Mr. Obama said in the interview.

At the end of “A Christmas Carol”, Dickens wrote the following,

…He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.

Unfortunately I don’t see the same sort of 180 degree turn-around in Obama’s future.

So, I guess I’ll settle for his firing on November 6th, instead.

As Clint Eastwood said, 

If someone’s not doing their job…we’ve got to let them go.