STANDARD BLOG: It's nice to see that the idea of sitting down for a confab with Ahmadenijad no longer has a seat at the table of intelligent ideas. But someone better break the news gently to the Atlantic Monthly's Matthew Yglesias who lionized Obama's freshly abandoned plans in this month's hot-off-the-presses issue:
At the YouTube debate on July 23, 2007, when Obama was asked whether he would be willing to meet "without precondition … with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea," the right answer, conventionally speaking, was a qualified "no." But Obama answered in the affirmative. Initially, even sympathetic observers like The Nation's David Corn called this statement a "flub" at best…
Obama's team did not try to qualify (or, in political parlance, "clarify") his remark, and no one said he misspoke… Soon, on the stump, he was regularly referring to his willingness to meet with foreign leaders, unlike other top presidential candidates. |
