Sailors have used bayonets, but Governor Romney was talking about ships, Mr. President.
"You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916," Obama said. "Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed.
"We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go under water, nuclear submarines," he said.
Obama even evoked a children's military role-playing board game, "Battleship," to bash his rival.
"The question is not a game of Battleship, where we're counting ships," he said.
I am sure that 'horses and bayonets' will resonate with the Journolists, MSNBC, OWS, and Soledad crowd.
Ships, if I recall, are nautical weapons platforms.
Horses and bayonets are of some use to ground forces and certainly are being used in Afghanistan.
President Obama's snotty crack, like most snotty cracks, missed the mark and the point made by Governor Romney entirely. The issue was the diminished capacity of the United States Navy.
Mitt Romney got under the President's skin with the fact that the US NAVY has fewer ships to serve the world and protect our shores than it did when Woodrow Wilson, the first Progressive, was President. President Obama went snotty, purile and true to his character.
This is a President of diminished capacity and he did not bring much to the table from the get-go. Vote.
