Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has been a little off-track the past couple of weeks. The gospel concert in South Carolina was a dumb mistake, compounded by additional dumb mistakes. Taking on Social Security solvency proved to be very unhelpful. He took the right stands on telecom immunity and the Mukasey nomination, but only after others got there first. The disappointment in many corners of the blogosphere has been palpable.
On Monday, Josh Marshall offered a sensible suggestion: “If Obama is looking for an issue where the politics and the substance both point in the same direction it’s sitting right in front of him: Iran.”
Whether Obama would pick up the hint was another matter. Indeed, I kind of rolled my eyes yesterday afternoon when Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) brought together 30 Senate Dems to send a letter to the White House, urging the president to stop saber-rattling towards Iran — and Obama’s name wasn’t on the list.
Chris Dodd and Hillary Clinton singed on; why didn’t Obama? As it turns out, he had a good reason — because he wanted to go beyond what the letter to Bush said. The campaign told reporters:
“Senator Obama admires Senator Webb and his sincere and tireless efforts on this issue. But it will take more than a letter to prevent this administration from using the language contained within the Kyl-Lieberman resolution to justify military action in Iran. This requires a legislative answer and Senator Obama intends to propose one.”
Good. It reminded me of a good point Atrios raised recently: for the presidential candidates who are currently in office, “I’ve been much more interested in what they do as officeholders than what they do as candidates.” If Obama is going to oppose Bush’s policy towards Iran, he can talk about what he’d do differently if elected, or he can go ahead and use his current office to push a legislative remedy.
As it turns out, Obama will apparently do both.
He’s promising a legislative answer to Kyl-Lieberman, which would be helpful, and Obama is laying out a far more progressive approach to dealing with Iran.
Senator Barack Obama says he would “engage in aggressive personal diplomacy” with Iran if elected president and would offer economic inducements and a possible promise not to seek “regime change” if Iran stopped meddling in Iraq and cooperated on terrorism and nuclear issues.
In an hourlong interview on Wednesday, Mr. Obama made clear that forging a new relationship with Iran would be a major element of a broad effort to stabilize Iraq as he executed a speedy timetable for the withdrawal of American combat troops.
Mr. Obama said that Iran had been “acting irresponsibly” by supporting Shiite militant groups in Iraq. He also emphasized that Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program and its support for “terrorist activities” were serious concerns.
But he asserted that Iran’s support for militant groups in Iraq reflected its anxiety over the Bush administration’s policies in the region, including talk of a possible American military strike on Iranian nuclear installations.
Making clear that he planned to talk to Iran without preconditions, Mr. Obama emphasized further that “changes in behavior” by Iran could possibly be rewarded with membership in the World Trade Organization, other economic benefits and security guarantees.
“We are willing to talk about certain assurances in the context of them showing some good faith,” he said in the interview at his campaign headquarters here. “I think it is important for us to send a signal that we are not hellbent on regime change, just for the sake of regime change, but expect changes in behavior. And there are both carrots and there are sticks available to them for those changes in behavior.”
I’ve been wondering why someone, anyone, hasn’t said this before. Most of the political rhetoric, even among Dems, is premised on the notion that we should try diplomacy with Tehran before the near-inevitable military confrontation.
Obama’s articulated approach is far more reasonable, and more importantly, grounded in reality. As Matt Yglesias put it:
Zbigniew Brzezinski and other people in the Obama circle have long been advocates of this more sensible approach to Iran, but until now the subject has been considered to “hot” politically to touch. But now Obama’s going there and it’s a very good thing he is. This is what we should be debating in this country — strategy, not tactics. A diplomatic approach that doesn’t work followed by war is really not much better than a “rush to war”, what’s needed is a strategy that avoids war and advances the interests of the United States. And now Obama’s putting one on the table.
More of this, please.