DUBUQUE, Iowa (AP) – Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney said Saturday that if he’s elected, he wants “to carry the big stick” by increasing the size of the nation’s military.

The former Massachusetts governor said his plans include reversing Clinton administration troop cuts and increasing the military budget. He repeated a call he’s made previously to boost the size of the military by at least 100,000 troops.

Romney recalled the words of President Theodore Roosevelt, who said the United States should “Speak softly and carry a big stick,” in its foreign relations.

“I want to carry the big stick,” Romney told about 200 people at an event in Dubuque. “I hope I don’t have to use it, but I want to make sure we have it so that people understand we are a nation of strength.”

He criticized former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards’ recent comment questioning President Bush’s policy of a global war on terror and whether such a war exists.

“If you look across the world you can recognize that there is terror going on,” he said. “There is a worldwide effort of different people all intent on bringing down modernity and, replacing it, in some respects, with barbarism.”

Responding to a question from a woman who asked why many Republican candidates seem to be avoiding the president “like the plague” because of the war, Romney said Americans are going to have to “get our mind-set out of just Iraq.” He called President Bush a statesman who has shored up the nation’s economy, expanded renewable energy capabilities and chosen appropriate U.S. Supreme Court justices.

“Everything he does, he does from the standpoint of what is best for the American people,” Romney said.

Romney is in the midst of a three-day trip to Iowa. At the Dubuque event, he fielded questions on everything from health care to taxation to national security.

His wife, Ann, gave the crowd a scare, falling a couple of inches from the platform stage. After the noisy tumble, which elicited a loud gasp from the crowd, she got up quickly with help from her husband and those around. She joked that “I ride horses, that was nothing.”

“That was a much milder fall than being bucked off of a horse,” she said.

During the weekend stops in Iowa, Romney emphasized that he’ll participate in a Republican straw poll in Ames on Aug. 11. It’s a huge fundraiser for the state party, but other Republican presidential candidates, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Arizona Sen. John McCain, plan to skip the event.

Of the Iowa caucuses process, he said “it’s a service I don’t think the entire nation understands and respects as much as I do.”

Ann Romney also chimed in on the topic.

“It’s so impressive to see how this process works in Iowa and how important this process is,” she said. “This is how the candidate is taken through the fine sieve, spit out and (voters) figure out what’s going on.”

AP-ES-06-16-07 1455EDT