The Nation: An Obama Flub at the YouTube Debate?

Posted by David Corn



http://www.thenation.com/blogs/capitalgames?pid=217102

It would only be wise to emulate them.

:sarcasm:

Which did Carter set for Egypt?

Both of those worked out very well.

No, in each case there was a pre-summit diplomatic delegation that worked behind the scenes hammering out the conditions for these meetings.

On the American side, Anthony Lake (who formerly went with Kissinger to North Viet Nam) headed up this for Jimmy Carter's (as he did for Clinton's Dayton Accords) and Elliot Abrams was instrumental in this regard for Reagan before the first Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Geneva.

Agenda's are set. What will be discussed. What, if any, press will be allowed. Etc.

THESE are examples or preconditions

Like your favored candidate, you're evading the question. Your examples are not preconditions. They are planning.

You and the Obama camp are trying to retroactively change the definition of "preconditions" as applied to diplomacy. It really is funny.

That is what a diplomatic delegation does. They meet to discuss the conditions that must be met before leaders meet face to face. They can be as simple as the ones I mentioned above or much more complex like "you have to pull back your troops two miles from the border."

By your wacky definition, only meeting with people who do not fling their own feces is a "precondition" - you are engaging in I think your in a very tiny (and very temporary) minority on that.

historical events and definitions change to fit the need.

I will not meet with you until you stop your nuclear program. I will not meet with you until you renounce violence. I will not meet with you until accept UN inspectors.

It has nothing to do with joint preparations for a meeting.

They can be as simple as the ones I mentioned above or much more complex like "you have to pull back your troops two miles from the border."

Or the ones you mentioned.

A fun little dust-up between the two frontrunners. Obama needs to take a page from Clinton and be more thorough in his responses at the debates, particularly in the area of national security, but this is not the "winner" that Team Clinton thought it would be. Obama's response was more in tune with what primary voters are looking for and Team Obama's flip-flop memos to the media resulted in Mean Ole Hilly, who is on the record as favoring talks with bad guys, throwing the first punch yesterday.

(in other words you don't show your cards) until you get a sense of your opponent. This is the way Foreign Policy worked before BUSH. You sent an envoy as a scout and you size up the issues...you don't do what Bush has done by making DECLARATIONS of AXIS OF EVIL and WE WILL KILL YOU...because with tactics like that ...there's nothing left to negotiate. Hillary and Dodd were being realists using time honored negotiating tactics. Obama just jumped the gun...speaking before he thought.

Claiming Eastern Europe wasn't under the control of the Soviet Union...undercut his one advantage over Carter...national security and foreign policy...

People are calling her on her triangulations now.

The bluster is getting old and we don't have the military might to keep up "the swagger."

I'm disgusted at what I see as "The Anti-Diplomats" within this War-mongering Administration.

It's similar to Ford's gaffe about Poland... shows no understanding of international relations.

BLOG | Posted 07/24/2007 @ 4:48pm
Experience is Overrated
Ari Berman

<SNIP>

So it's a little disturbing to see Clinton surrogates like former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright giving reporters a tutorial today on how to negotiate with hostile regimes. In a follow-up interview with a newspaper in Iowa, Hillary piled on by calling Obama's comments "irresponsible and frankly naive."

Let's step back a second. The Obama camp could argue that it was "irresponsible and frankly naive" for Senator Clinton ☼ to hand President Bush a blank-check to go to war and then claim that she was only giving the Administration the authorization to win over the United Nations and keep weapons inspectors in Iraq until they finished the job. It was painfully obvious, except maybe to Senators and their advisors in Washington, that Bush would use Congressional approval as a mandate to invade.

Hillary's evolution on the war appears to some as more motivated by calculation than conviction. She supported the war for the better part of four years, began to express a few qualified misgivings and then, once she entered the presidential ring, quickly introduced a withdrawal proposal and a plan to de-authorize the war.

Convenient timing. So next time the Clinton campaign touts her foreign policy experience, why doesn't the Obama campaign accuse her of pandering?

Ironically, David reminds me that George H.W. Bush tried to use Bill Clinton's inexperience in foreign policy against him in 1992. Al Gore employed the same tactic against George W. Bush in 2000.

<SNIP>

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters?pid=217218

*****

BLOG | Posted 07/24/2007 @ 10:15pm
Why Obama Got it Right

Katrina vanden Heuvel

In Monday's debate, and with the benefit of having time to think through her response, Hillary Clinton posed as the foreign policy sophisticate to Barack Obama the bold leader who did not hesitate to say that he would meet with the leaders of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela. My colleague David Corn argues that Obama has committed a major blunder reflecting his lack of foreign policy experience.

(My colleague Ari Berman posted his smart and sharp counter to David's argument on behalf of those like Hillary Clinton who are "steeped in the nuances, language and minefields of foreign policy." But I feel strongly enough to weigh in on this debate.)

Those "nuances and minefields" can also be traps. Witness how far Clinton's nuanced experience got her when confronted with the 2002 Iraq war resolution.

David may well be right that Obama's opponents will try to exploit his response. But from a foreign policy point of view was Obama's response so wrong and Clinton's so right? Her husband's administration generally followed Hillary's approach; during his two terms President Clinton did not meet with Fidel Castro or with Hugo Chavez or with the leaders of Iran, Syria, and North Korea --while generally pursuing a policy of trying to isolate these countries. But what did the Clinton approach actually accomplish? The respective regimes of Castro in Cuba and Chavez in Venezuela have only grown stronger, and more influential in Latin America. Although Syria was forced to withdraw its military forces from Lebanon last year, the regime of Bashar Assad is as firmly entrenched in power as was his father's. And in spite of the odious politics and qualities of Ahmadinejad, Iran carries more weight in the Middle East than it did doing the early 1990s while American power and standing has declined considerably.

<SNIP>

Above all, foreign policy is a matter of simultaneously projecting American confidence and American humility. In signaling that he was willing to meet with the leaders of these countries, Obama was signaling that the United States has the confidence in its values to meet with anyone. But he also signaled a certain humility that reflects the understanding that the next president must reach out to the rest of the world and not merely issue conditions from the White House and threaten military force if it does not get its way.

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?pid=217320

More of a repeat of the attack on Hillary for the IWR vote...and vanden Heuvel gives a simplistic and mostly inaccurate recounting of Bill Clinton's foreign policy

And frankly, after Berman's factually challenged hit piece on Hillary a few weeks ago, his opinion is not credible IMO...

The blunder Obama made was not on policy. Personally I have no doubt Obama would actually pursue the course Hillary made clear...his blunder was political...and highlighted his inexperience, both in terms of governance at a national level, and political inexperience...

Corn is absolutely right, had Obama made this mistake in the general election debate he would have been roasted alive...would have been a blunder that quite possibly could have cost him the election...

in 2006. She did not state any preconditions. She Blasted Bush for not talking to other nations. NOW she wants to Flip Flop. Give me a break. She is worst than Bush. At least he has the guts to stand his ground. She just does not know what lie to tell first. They she forgets the lie.

They pass information back and forth and then go into denial when it's proven to be false.

before you keep repeating this lie over and over. I'm not a Hillary fan and supporter, but jeez, why keep repeating a falsehood over and over again. That's NOT what she said.

& world bank.

Maybe someone should ask the candidates what it is they dislike about Chavez.

she had time to pick up on a point that Obama didn't say--but I'm pretty sure he wouldn't allow himself to be used by rogue leaders. He just focused on the diplomacy aspect, not all the conditions and particulars.

if it were the general election and he said something like that, the right would roast him and hang him out to dry. He needs to tighten it up just a bit if he's going to go all the way.

reponse that I liked the best. :shrug: Hillary's sounded positively imperial next to.

The ad to show that Senator Clinton jumped the shark on the issue is to have her response in the debate that she wouldn't talk to those "evil" leaders in her first year and then have the reverse opinion she said just last April where she felt that we need to talk to our leaders. Throw in the usual "which Clinton is it?"... bing, bang, done.

The ad to show what Obama meant would be to show Nixon talking to Mao in 1973 and Reagan talking to Gorby in 1984...some text about how we need to talk to leaders that are our enemies to make sure we don't fight "dumb wars". Then have Obama's statement about the need for diplomacy.

Corn, like Clinton, jumped the shark on this issue.