Duncan quotes Yglesias on Bush's asinine condemnation of the idea of meeting with despotic leaders:
[I]t's bizarre for George W. Bush to criticize Barack Obama on the grounds that "it'll send the wrong message" for Obama to hold a meeting with "a tyrant who puts his people in prison because of their political beliefs" considering that Bush does exactly that on a regular basis. ...
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.
That's not the question. The question is, does Bush meet with some tyrants (Mubarak, the Saudis, the Chinese, Putin) and not others because of a sincere but arbitrarily applied policy of snubbing dictators? Clearly, the answer is no. He meets with the tyrants he meets with because he finds them useful, and vice versa. A President McCain would do the same. A President Hillary Clinton would do the same, also. And a President Obama would, too.
What's clever about Obama's position is that it has the benefit of being absolutely honest. He says that he will meet with anyone, because it's necessary to have a dialogue with very bad people sometimes. That's called realpolitik. He's prospectively wiggling out of the trap that Bush laid for himself. If Obama were to say he won't meet with the "bad guys", either, if he were to be elected he would have to explain why he meets with some and not others. This way avoids the hypocrisy.
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