Hillary v. Obama, Round One

Hillary is exactly right when she says she would not commit to meeting with Kim Jong Il and any other enemy dictator. Obama is exactly wrong when he says he would.

That doesn't mean, as his spokesmen incorrectly claim, that you don't engage. But you don't have President-to-Dictator, one-on-one, meetings. Nothing good can come of it. Obama's people say Clinton's view is the same policy Bush has engaged in; true enough, but it was also the policy of Clinton, Bush, Reagan, and so on. Maybe not Carter. :-)

But even Nixon and Reagan, who did meet with the top honchos who were our "enemies," did so only after years of political posturing and negotiation. You have to set the stage for that kind of thing. Nixon met Mao in the fourth year of his presidency; Reagan met Gorbachev in the fifth year of his.

Hillary didn't say she wouldn't meet with Kim Jong Il ever. She said she wouldn't do it in the first year, and she said it because she understands history and political complexity. And either Obama does not understand those things, or he is pretending he doesn't because he knows many of his potential supporters don't, either.