Free Republic

John McCain, abetted by President Bush, is trying to depict Barack Obama as a foreign policy naïf for being willing to meet with the leaders of troubling countries. This stems from Obama's response to a debate question last year asking whether he would be willing to meet, without preconditions, in the first year of his presidency with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea. Obama said he would. Promising to do so in the first year of his presidency was foolish. In fact, Obama probably shouldn't have committed to such meetings. All he should have said is...

When the House of Representatives takes up arms against $4 gas by voting 324-84 to sue OPEC, you know that election-year discourse has gone surreal. Another unmistakable sign is when a presidential candidate makes a gaffe, then, realizing it is too egregious to take back without suffering humiliation, decides to make it a centerpiece of his foreign policy. Before the Democratic debate of July 23, Barack Obama had never expounded upon the wisdom of meeting, without precondition, with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar al-Assad, Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong Il or the Castro brothers. But in that debate, he was asked about doing...