{"id":15581,"date":"2008-05-18T13:00:24","date_gmt":"2008-05-18T17:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/15581.html"},"modified":"2008-05-18T13:00:24","modified_gmt":"2008-05-18T17:00:24","slug":"obama-jfk-and-reagan-vs-bush-mccain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/obama-jfk-and-reagan-vs-bush-mccain\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama, JFK, and Reagan vs. Bush, McCain"},"content":{"rendered":"

I can’t help but enjoy the fact that Barack Obama is successfully taking attacks from George W. Bush and John McCain, and turning them into a positive<\/a>. He’s effectively taking GOP talking points, and throwing them back in their face.<\/p>\n

Sen. Barack Obama went one step further today in his pushback against presumptive GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain and President Bush on appeasement, suggesting that both Republicans have a problem with presidents past who have engaged in direct diplomacy.<\/p>\n

“If George Bush and John McCain have a problem with direct diplomacy, led by the president of the United States, then they can explain why they have a problem with John F. Kennedy because that’s what he did with [Soviet leader Nikita] Khrushchev, or Ronald Reagan, ’cause that’s what he did with [Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev, or Richard Nixon ’cause that’s what they did with [Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung],” Obama said in Roseburg, Ore. “That’s exactly the kind of diplomacy we need to keep us safe.”<\/p>\n

Obama called the dust-up “appealing,” after Bush said in Israel at the Knesset that it was a mistake to talk about diplomacy with “terrorists and radicals.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I haven’t seen any polling on this, and I have no idea whether voters in general find the notion of diplomacy with unsavory international rivals appealing or not. But I think Obama has framed it exactly the right way — we’ve confronted dangerous enemies before, and open dialog has produced more results for our interests than closed minds.<\/p>\n

I didn’t hear all of Obama’s remarks, but in case he didn’t mention it, I’d just add that we’ve already seen the results of the Bush\/McCain approach. Did conditions improve with North Korea and Iran once we decided to stop talking to them?<\/p>\n

In provides a context for the debate — Obama, Reagan, JFK, and success on one side; Bush, McCain, and failure on the other.
\n
\nThe McCain campaign responded:<\/p>\n

“Offering the current Iranian regime an unconditional summit and the status of a super power akin to the Soviets, as Barack Obama has suggested, shows incredibly weak judgment and a dangerous lack of experience,” McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My goodness, this sure is dumb. First, if McCain is troubled by the notion of equating Iran with the USSR, why hasn’t he said anything while prominent far-right Republicans have equated Iran with Nazi Germany for the last few years? Doesn’t that<\/i> show “incredibly weak judgment”?<\/p>\n

Second, Obama has not offered Iran an “unconditional summit.” That’s utterly absurd, patently dishonest, and the McCain campaign knows it. Obama has said for months that before any direct engagement with a country like Iran, there would have to be extensive diplomatic legwork completed first. Does any serious person think Obama, shortly after he’s inaugurated, is going to jump on a plane to Tehran or Pyongyang — without any advance work — just to see what happens? Does the McCain campaign really believe we’re foolish enough to buy such nonsense?<\/p>\n

Obama is betting that voters, who may or may not be familiar with the details of five decades of diplomacy, will have an implicit understanding of the dynamics here — the United States is not afraid to sit at the table with rival nations. Kennedy wasn’t; Reagan wasn’t; Obama isn’t. Bush and McCain, meanwhile, harbor the notion that not talking to adversarial countries is punishment to them, and will somehow advance our interests.<\/p>\n

I like our chances in this debate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I can’t help but enjoy the fact that Barack Obama is successfully taking attacks from George W. Bush and John McCain, and turning them into a positive. He’s effectively taking GOP talking points, and throwing them back in their face. Sen. Barack Obama went one step further today in his pushback against presumptive GOP presidential […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15581\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}