When anonymous sources claimed to a British paper that President Obama did not appreciate America's Anglo-Saxon heritage, they opened a hornets nest and got a stinging response from the Obama campaign, which has accused the Romney camp of "continous fumbling of the foreign policy football" even before Romney's plane landed at the first of his stops on his foreign tour.

Jennifer Psaki, the campaign press secretary onboard Air Force One, decried the anonymous sources.

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"One of his advisers violated exactly what they said they wouldn't do, which is criticize the president beyond the borders of the U.S.," she told reporters on the president's aircraft. "This is a case where there is a continuous bungling of the foreign policy football here, and it does raise a question as to whether Mitt Romney and his team are ready to have a serious conversation about a foreign policy."

White House Press secretary Jay Carney called the anonymous Republican critics "gratuitously ignorant of the facts. "