RENO, Nev. — President Barack Obama on Monday courted support among the nation’s oldest and biggest combat veterans’ organization.
Obama addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Reno as opinion polls show high approval ratings on national security and foreign policy. He said his record - ending the war in Iraq, setting a timetable for winding down the war in Afghanistan, killing Osama bin Laden and creating economic benefits for soldiers returning home - demonstrates his support for current and former service members.
“As we look ahead to the challenges we face as a nation and the leadership that’s required, you don’t just have my words, you have my deeds,” Obama said. “You have the promises I’ve made and the promises that I’ve kept.”
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is set to speak to the same group today. The former Massachusetts governor will be outlining his foreign policy views just before leaving for a six-day trip to England, Poland and Israel.
Veterans, whom exit polls showed accounted for about 15 percent of the electorate in the 2008 presidential election, remain a tough sell for the Democratic president.
“Even though the VFW isn’t the sweet spot for the electorate for Barack Obama, it makes sense for him to show his flag, to reach out, to talk to them,” said Stu Rothenberg, editor of the nonpartisan “Rothenberg Political Report” in Washington. “He knows this isn’t his natural constituency but when you’re president, you do this.
“I think he’ll still lose them,” Rothenberg said.
While Obama never mentioned his political opponent directly, he said some critics opposed his decision to set a timeline for a withdrawal of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
“When you’re commander in chief you owe your military” a plan for ending a conflict, Obama said.
Later Monday, Obama planned fundraisers that will collect at least $3.4 million in Oakland, Calif., before traveling today to Portland, Ore., and Seattle for more campaign events and fundraisers. The next day, he’ll be in New Orleans for campaign events and fundraisers, concluding with a speech to the National Urban League before returning to Washington.
In 2008, Republican John McCain, a decorated former prisoner of war in Vietnam, captured 54 percent of the veterans’ vote compared with 44 percent for Obama. Thirty five percent of veterans voting in 2008 identified themselves as Democrats, 34 percent as Republicans and the balance were independents, exit polls conducted for national television networks showed.
Rothenberg said any credible Republican nominee is going to have an advantage among veterans, who he said tend to be older, white and patriotic, and “look and sound more Republican than the rest of the country.”
Still, “Mitt Romney is not John McCain when it comes to personal heroism, national military service,” Rothenberg said.
Neither Obama nor Romney served in the military.
Romney has spent little time campaigning on military or defense issues, Rothenberg said, because “they’ve decided the election is about jobs, jobs, jobs and the economy.” National security “is a tiny part of that campaign.”
Support for Romney isn’t a foregone conclusion. Veterans narrowly favored Democrat Bill Clinton, who was criticized for avoiding military service during Vietnam, over World War II veteran George H.W. Bush in 1992.
“We are a diverse organization” by geography, age, and nationality, Richard DeNoyer, 69, national commander of the VFW and a retired Marine and Vietnam combat veteran from Middleton, Mass., said in a telephone interview July 20.
The VFW doesn’t endorse presidential candidates.
Members attending the113th annual convention are concerned about the war in Afghanistan, turmoil in the Middle East and economic belt tightening at home and the effect on veteran and military health-care programs, he said.
Unemployment among veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was 9.5 percent in June, not seasonally adjusted, compared with 13.3 percent in the same month a year earlier, according to the Labor Department. That’s worse than the 8.2 percent jobless rate for the nation as a whole.
Veterans as a group have some specific concerns. The Veterans Affairs Department is overwhelmed by a decade of fighting overseas, Bloomberg News reported May 23. Record numbers of ex-soldiers are turning to the government for disability pay, for example, adding to a backlog of claims and delays that have dogged the agency for years.
Information for this article was contributed from Washington by William Selway and Indira A.R. Lakshmanan of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 3 on 07/24/2012