Deftly pivoting on a dime, the Obama campaign has emphatically declared the irrelevancy of the Hamas endorsement. But it was not ever thus. Let's enter the way-back machine and journey all the way back to April when Hamas let its preference be known:
When asked about the endorsement, Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, was flattered that Hamas compared his candidate to JFK: "We all agree that John Kennedy was a great president, and it's flattering when anybody says that Barack Obama would follow in his footsteps."
And yet suddenly it's dirty pool to mention this endorsement, one that initially flattered the Obama campaign? Actually, Axelrod's initial reaction highlights something I pointed out a couple of weeks ago - Obama loves to be loved, and that leads him to some strange places. We truly have entered some odd ground when a presidential campaign welcomes kind words from an Iranian terror proxy.
The affair hints at the biggest concern many serious voters will have about an Obama campaign. Too often when it comes to foreign affairs, Obama's instincts head in precisely the wrong direction. In his stirring speech on Tuesday, Obama chided the Bush administration, saying, "I trust the American people to understand that it is not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but to our enemies, like Roosevelt did."
Forget the fact that the implied FDR-Hitler summit never actually happened nor was it ever contemplated. Instead focus on FDR's truly vigorous pre-war diplomacy with Imperial Japan. This Obama proclaimed "wisdom" got us Pearl Harbor.
Talking to Iran in itself would not be bad. But assuming that we have a good faith partner in such a dialogue would be not only obtuse, but dangerous. So then the next question becomes, Would Obama make such an assumption and govern as a latter-day Jimmy Carter? Carter has never met a dictator or potentate that he didn't think he could move by his unique combination of sanctimony and self-regard. The potentates and dictators have also uniformly charmed the former president. Perhaps Obama would be cut from the same cloth.
Of course, Obama could assuage such concerns by making an announcement that an Obama administration, like a McCain administration, would be Hamas' worst nightmare. Such a statement would also be a quaint tip of the hat to a bygone era when politics ended at the water's edge. But such vulgar saber-rattling would sound uncomfortably Bush-like. Besides, if Obama made such a statement, there would be people somewhere who wouldn't love him. Would he be willing to pay such a high price?
More importantly, is Obama capable of making such a hard-headed determination that America actually has enemies in this world who are intractable? If the answer to that is yes, we have seen no signs of it in the campaign to date. Obama seems very comfortable with the left wing notion that America's international disputes began with George W. Bush and thus will end with Bush's departure from office.
Very important exit question: Do you think our enemies are trembling at the prospect of dealing with the blood-and-iron troika of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama?
