Romney Says "Even Jimmy Carter" Would Have Authorized Osama Raid

UPDATE: Mitt Romney shot back on Monday over claims by President Obama's team that the presumptive GOP nominee wouldn't have authorized the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, telling reporters that "even Jimmy Carter would have given that order."

Team Obama has moved to make national security a major issue in the general election, and a large part of that push has centered around the president's campaign making sure that Americans don't have a chance to forget that it was Obama who authorized the raid that killed the former al-Qaida mastermind.

Romney and his backers, however, have accused Obama of trying to politicize an event that had united the country, and have taken issue with the accusations that Bin Laden would still be alive if Romney had been in the Oval Office last year.

The New York Times explains that by name-dropping Carter, Romney appears to be trying to tie Obama to a former president who has been viewed by many as weak on national security issues. But, the paper points out, that comparison is somewhat flawed: "the signature military raid Mr. Carter ordered—to rescue United States Embassy hostages in Tehran in 1980—was a failure, the raid Mr. Obama ordered against Bin Laden was a success."

Friday, April 27: President Obama's reelection team has made no secret of the fact that it plans to remind voters about the president's highest-profile foreign policy success: last year's killing of Osama Bin Laden.

But on Friday the campaign went one step farther, suggesting in a new ad that if Mitt Romney had been in the Situation Room last year, the al-Qaida leader may still be alive.

Overlaid with somber music, the ad, "One Chance," begins with narration by Bill Clinton: "That’s one thing George Bush said that was right. The president is the decider in chief." Now-iconic photos of Obama in the Situation Room prior to the raid appear before the ad pivots to statements Romney made during the 2007 primary campaign, including his belief that "it’s not worth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person."

The ad then asks: "Which path would Romney have taken?"

The new spot comes one day after an aggressive speech by Vice President Joe Biden that attacked the former Massachusetts governor's foreign policy chops, saying the presumptive GOP nominee wants to go "back to a foreign policy that would have America go it alone."

The Washington Post has a statement from a Romney spokesperson, who said it's "sad to see the Obama campaign seek to use an event that unified our country to once again divide us." The Post recalls that in 2007, the Obama campaign chided Hillary Clinton’s campaign for invoking Bin Laden "to score political points."

Watch the ad in full: