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But I digress. Sad to say, Barack [deleted] Obama has a middle name which must not be uttered. and he has a foreign policy blueprint that [also unutterably] is made up as he goes along, heedless to history, but who said eschatology has anything to do with history?
And The Anointed One's hoped-for locution partner, Ahmadodojihad of Tehran, also works for the chiliastic Day of Doom with a burning yearning inside and outside, outside in his plutonium & uranium fueled reactors that the IAEA & a feckless group called the EU[nuchs] hope to deter him from.
AP notices that this tendency to improvise on the wing might make BHO a good debater, but leaves a bit lacking in the deep-thinker department. Here's AP:
Obama has asserted for months that his willingness to sit down with foes sets him apart from Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton and now McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, who challenges Obama on that point.
But U.S. diplomacy is not that simple and neither is his position.
THE OLD SPIN:
In a Democratic presidential debate last summer, Obama was asked if he'd meet the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea without precondition and during his first year in office.
"I would," Obama said.
Since then he has frequently reiterated his belief that no preconditions should be set.
"When you say preconditions, what you're really saying is, 'I'm not going to talk to you until you agree to do exactly what I want you to do,'" Obama said. "Well, that's not how negotiations take place."
Challenged by Clinton in multiple debates, Obama allowed that while he would not set preconditions, he would have "preparations" and would not rush to see certain leaders right away.
The precise difference between preconditions and preparations has not been spelled out. What's clear is that low-level talks would precede any summit, as happens now.
Clinton called him naive. She said she would not risk the prestige of the presidency by negotiating directly with countries such as Iran until they had agreed to change their ways.
Obama called that a case of old Washington thinking.
The new thinking, however, appears not to have been thought all the way through.
THE NEW SPIN:
Obama objected on CNN this week to "this obsession with Ahmadinejad" and explained guardedly: "I would be willing to meet with Iranian leaders if we had done sufficient preparations for that meeting.
"Whether Ahmadinejad is the right person to meet with right now, we don't even know how much power he is going to have a year from now," Obama added. "He is not the most powerful person in Iran."
He said he would expect "to meet with those people who can actually make decisions" in Iran on its nuclear program, its aid to terrorists and destabilization in Iraq.
He did not explain how he would get around Iran's president to other people of influence.
Similarly, prominent Obama supporters have jumped into the debate to say he has believed all along that one does not go blindly into negotiations with dictators.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, for one, is drawing distinctions between Iran and Cuba.
A veteran of semiofficial negotiations with dictators, he said Obama should be open to meeting Cuban President Raul Castro, but "I think you don't talk to Ahmadinejad. You talk to some of the moderate clerics."
On the other hand, McCain supporter James A. Baker III, former Republican secretary of state and chairman of the Iraq commission, has sounded closer to Obama on the subject of negotiating with hostile governments.
"You talk to your enemies, not just your friends," Baker said in 2006, words echoed by Obama.
Baker's commission urged engagement with Iran and Syria, without preconditions, at the level of the president or secretary of state, on the matter of Iraq. As secretary of state, Baker held many meetings with Syrians despite their listing by the U.S. as state sponsors of terrorism.
Obama's campaign is carefully picking its words on Cuba as the Illinois senator campaigns in Florida this week, mindful of the opposition by many exiles to too much liberalization of U.S. policy.
The matter of what constitutes a precondition for negotiations with Castro is one sticky point.
Susan Rice, Obama's foreign policy adviser, outlined what resembled preconditions Wednesday when she talked on the MSNBC cable network about what Cuba must do for an Obama administration to deal fully with that state.
Obama favors relaxing restrictions on family travel and remittances between the island and the U.S.
But Rice identified "concrete progress" toward true elections, the freeing of political prisoners and a free press as a requirement to "initiate a process through engagement."
That did not sound like an invitation to sit and talk any time soon.
Can it be that the Anointed One is merely a precursor?
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