At yesterday’s White House press conference, a reporter asked the president about Barack Obama’s position that the United States should be willing, after careful diplomatic legwork, to talk to our international rivals.
Q: [A]s President, you have obviously considered and rejected this approach. And I’m wondering if you can give us a little insight into your thinking about this, and just explain to the American people what is lost by talking with those when we disagree?
BUSH: What’s lost by embracing a tyrant who puts his people in prison because of their political beliefs? What’s lost is it will send the wrong message. It will send a discouraging message to those who wonder whether America will continue to work for the freedom of prisoners. It will give great status to those who have suppressed human rights and human dignity.
When the reporter followed up, and suggested that a president could talk to a foreign leader without “embracing” him or her, Bush responded, “Well, talking to him is embracing.” He went on to clarify that “having your picture taken with a tyrant … lends the status of the office and the status of our country to him.”
Listening to this live, my very first thought was the image of Reagan dispatching Donald Rumsfeld to have his picture taken with Saddam Hussein after he’d used chemical weapons on his own people. By Bush’s logic, Reagan “embraced” Saddam and lent Saddam the stature of the United States.
My second thought was specifically about U.S. policy towards Cuba, and how Bush’s approach managed to be the only policy considered by the last half-century of presidents. We sent the “right message,” but managed to do absolutely nothing to actually improve matters for the Cuban people.
And my third thought was, “Hasn’t Bush spent more than a little time of his own with leaders who imprison their political enemies?”
Ezra had a good item on this.
[I]f some other enterprising blogger wants to collect pictures of George W. Bush meeting with leaders “who put [their] people in prison because of their political beliefs,” I’ll certainly link to it. The idea that Bush — who regularly hangs out with, and thus “lends the status of the office and the status of our country” to the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Russia, China, and Egypt — would ever try and take a strong, principled stand against meeting with, much less supporting, repressive autocrats…well, it’s what my grandmother would call chutzpah, and what the rest of us would call “nonsense on stilts.” It’s like Ike Turner filming a PSA on domestic violence, and when questioned, telling the reporter that he only does it sometimes.
Yglesias added:
Is it a good thing that the people of China and Russia and Saudi Arabia are, like the people of Cuba and Syria and Iran, ruled by dictators? Of course not. And if the lessons of history indicated that some kind of “no meetings ever” policy caused those regimes to melt and transform into wholesome democracies, then we wouldn’t be having this debate.
But things don’t work like that, and in the world as it is it’s hardly practical to eschew all meetings with everyone whose political system you don’t approve on. The question is, thus, whether or not this posture of creating a mostly arbitrary class of “bad guy” that we’re going to take down with our awesome powers of snubbing accomplishes anything meaningful. Obama’s contention is “no.” Bush’s contention is “yes” but he has absolutely nothing to show for it.
Quite right. I’d just add that Bush’s criticism of Obama’s approach is quite the political gift to the Democratic frontrunner. Americans are not only opposed to Bush’s Iraq policy, but generally disapprove of our diplomatic failures and the deterioration of our global standing. For the president to publicly denounce Obama’s beliefs about diplomacy only reinforces the belief that Obama is probably on the right track.
