Mitt Romney will not negotiate with the Taliban — he will defeat them. Barack Obama is done talking to Iran — window for diplomacy is shrinking. No one apologizes for America. We stand tall astride the world by virtue of our exceptional status.

This is just a small sampling of the rhetoric surrounding US foreign policy by the two rivals for the 2012 presidency.

The sniping is more than annoying, it is downright dangerous. It is designed to make us feel stronger without offering any real solutions to the myriad problems facing the United States at home and abroad.

The incumbent is facing a number of challenges, of course: a war in Afghanistan that seems physically impossible to win and politically impossible to lose; a defiant Iran that refuses to buckle to American pressure on its nuclear program, against a US Congress that appears intent on pushing the president into war; a conflict in Syria that has shocked he world, while the international community stands impotently on the sidelines; and a rogue state, Yemen, that is sponsoring Al Qaeda bombers whose ingenious underwear devices are now the bane of travelers everywhere.

Weigh this against a roaring deficit, a shrinking military budget, and a public that is increasingly gun-shy about foreign adventures, and you get some idea of Obama’s dilemma.

Romney, of course, faces no such constraints; he can blast away at his opponent, playing on the wounded national pride of Americans as he calls for firm action, regardless of the possibilities.

BOSTON, Mass. — A little birdie must have been sitting nearby during my lunch with a prominent Boston lawyer on Friday. We were discussing — what else? — the presidential elections, and the candidates’ relative chances of success.

Mitt Romney’s hat trick in Tuesday’s three primary races came almost as a footnote to the real news — voters are in a feisty mood, and are not afraid to show it. The former Massachusetts governor triumphed handily in Indiana, North Carolina, and West Virginia, gaining between 65 and 70 percent of the vote in each state. Of course, he was really the only one running. The interesting contests were more local, and far more contentious.

ONSET, Massachusetts — Two major events took place Saturday — the official start of Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, and the Supermoon. Both of them were a bit of a disappointment, at least in this small resort community on the Cape Cod canal.

For sheer excitement, the lunar orb had it over the president hands down. While Obama courted polite crowds in the battleground states of Ohio and Virginia, people the world over were feverishly readying their cameras and scouting out observation posts to capture what promised to be a spectacular show. Lady Moon was making her closest approach to Earth for 2012.

I led a group of friends away from a Cinco de Mayo party to the local beach to check things out. But the cloud cover was so thick that we could not see a thing — unless it was the margaritas that were obscuring our view.

My attempts to turn the conversation to politics, however, met with pretty stern resistance.

“No one really cares about the elections,” said Jim, a financial advisor from New York. “People are just sick of the whole topic.”