And that means you know who was wrong about Russia, correct? In a very belated concession by CNN and now some Democrats, CNN’s Chris Cillizza writes that the most clear-eyed national politician on Russia wasn’t Barack Obama, not Joe Biden, and not even Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.

In fact, as we could and did argue at the time, it was this guy:

At the time, CNN and other media outlets swooned over Barack Obama’s zinger about the 1980s wanting its foreign policy back. Obama used that zinger because Romney had called out Obama for his hot-mic comment to Dmitri Medvedev in March 2012 that Medvedev should let Vladimir Putin know that Obama would have “more flexibility” on missile-defense issues after the election. By the time of this presidential debate in October 2012, it had been a continuing Romney criticism of Obama’s fecklessness on foreign policy.

That fecklessness would get proven in both Syria and Ukraine in 2014, which makes this retreat from Cillizza and Democrats a lot less impressive in terms of intellectual honesty:

But today, after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops into eastern Ukraine, Romney’s comments look very, very different. And by “different,” I mean “right,” as even some Democrats are now acknowledging.

“This action by Putin further confirms that Mitt Romney was right when he called Russia the number one geopolitical foe,” California Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu said on CNN Monday night. …

What looked like a major flub during the 2012 campaign — and was used as a political cudgel by Obama — now looks very, very different. It should serve as a reminder that history is not written in the moment — and that what something looks like in that moment is not a guarantee of what it will always look like.

It only “looked like a major flub” in 2012 for the same reason that “binders full of women” looked that way. The media painted both as flubs, when neither of them were gaffes at all. On the latter, Romney had been asked about diversity in a prospective administration, and he answered that his team had binders filled with credentials from female candidates for his nominations. And on Russia, just four years after Putin invaded Georgia and threatened to invest the whole country over its interest in aligning with the West, Romney’s remark was not just a non-gaffe but was entirely supportable on its merits … had anyone bothered to report on those merits rather than focus on zinger games.

Here is @ChrisCillizza in 2012 yAs KweEn-ing @BarackObama for mocking @MittRomney's answer about Russiahttps://t.co/LuUQBqCr7c pic.twitter.com/6J0NUcRlIU

— Brian Anderson (@AZBrianAnderson) February 22, 2022

Worth noting, too, is that while Cillizza concedes that Romney was right, he never actually writes that Obama was wrong.

Even back in 2014, though, some media figures had figured out that the Obama/Biden administration were busily losing the new Cold War, or not even recognizing its existence. Time’s Simon Shuster wrote a cover article on that very point in July of that year:

A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 bearing 298 souls–AIDS researchers, young lovers, eager children–had been blown out of the sky, apparently by a Russian-made missile, and the dead fell in a gruesome storm. One voice, and one voice only, could put an end to this indecent standoff over the innocent victims. But Vladimir Putin merely shrugged and pointed a finger at the Ukrainian government and, by extension, its Western allies. “Without a doubt,” Putin told a meeting of his economic aides on the night of the disaster, “the state over whose territory this happened bears the responsibility for this frightful tragedy.”

Had Putin finally gone too far? As the days passed and the stench rose, the coldly calculating Russian President got his answer: apparently not. While state-controlled media at home buried Russia’s role in the disaster under an avalanche of anti-Western propaganda, leaders in Europe and the U.S. found themselves stymied once again by Putin’s brazenness. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, whose nation lost 193 citizens in the attack (one of them a U.S.-passport holder) called pitifully on Putin to do “what is expected of him” in helping recover the bodies. U.S. President Barack Obama struck a similar tone on July 21 after the victims’ remains had been packed into refrigerated train cars out of reach of foreign investigators: “Given its direct influence over the separatists, Russia and President Putin in particular has direct responsibility to compel them to cooperate with the investigation. That is the least that they can do.”

That was the crisis in a nutshell: the least Putin could do was the most Obama could ask for. The American President announced no deadlines, drew no red lines and made no threats. Even as U.S. intelligence sources asserted with growing confidence that Russian weapons and Russian allies were behind the missile attack, U.S. diplomats were met with roadblocks as they tried to rally Europe to stiffen sanctions against Putin. Obama and Rutte spoke as leaders without leverage, for their voters aren’t interested in military conflict with Russia or its puppets. A generation of Westerners has grown up in the happy belief that the Cold War ended long ago and peace is Europe’s fated future. They are slow to rally to the chore of once again containing Russia’s ambitions.

So Putin presses ahead. His increasingly overt goal is to splinter Europe, rip up the NATO umbrella and restore Russian influence around the world. As if to put an exclamation point on that manifesto, the pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine apparently resumed their antiaircraft attacks less than a week after the destruction of Flight 17. On July 23, two military aircraft belonging to the pro-Western Ukrainian government were shot down just a few miles away from the airliner’s crash site.

As I wrote at the time, the moment for reassessing Romney and Russia as a threat had already arrived:

Will that deter Putin? Not likely, unless Europe and the US unite in tough economic consequences for Putin’s ambitions, and start undermining the basis of his power — support from Russian industrial barons who got rich off of his power. Until then, Cold War II will continue in the same ugly direction as it has for the last several years, even if the current leadership in the West hasn’t recognized it until now. …

Maybe this administration has finally learned what “geopolitical threat” means.

Not only did the administration not learn that lesson, neither did the media or Joe Biden’s fellow Democrats — at least not until this week. It’s a measure of the media’s obsequious treatment of Obama and Biden then and now that even the Russian-backed insurrection in the Donbas and the shoot-down of a commercial airliner with Russian weapons didn’t force this acknowledgment until eight years later, with limited exceptions.

At this point, it’s a little late, although Romney will at least appreciate the extremely belated sentiment. Putin’s intentions and territorial ambitions have been clear since August 2008, and yet Obama sent Hillary Clinton with the infamous “reset button” to Sergei Lavrov just a few months later in attempting to shift blame for Putin’s actions to George W. Bush. The media will work like hell to make the Ukraine crisis all about Trump, too — and in fact the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson is already on the job:

Opinion: With Biden standing firm, Putin must wonder: Where’s Trump when I need him?

If Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to gobble up another chunk of Ukraine at little or no cost to his own interests, he should have done it while Donald Trump was still president. With President Biden leading the response, Putin’s potential costs are rising — while his hoped-for benefits have evaporated.

Well, why didn’t Putin do it then? Perhaps because Trump kept the price of oil and natural gas so low that Putin’s ability to fund such adventures was kept more limited. And perhaps because Putin understood that Trump might not want a war, but wouldn’t mind swinging a very large sanctions stick to pump himself up on the world stage when necessary. It seems pretty telling that Putin invaded Ukraine initially on Obama’s watch and wants to complete the task on Biden’s.

Maybe the media will start mulling over that coincidence, but don’t bet on it coming for another eight years or so.