From Michael Barone:

Obama is said to be following a realist foreign policy. Don’t worry about human rights; propitiate evil dictators and make deals with them. But if the issue is to avoid a nuclear-armed Iran aiming its weapons at its neighbors, what is realistic? It seems to me Obama is giving up a small but nontrivial chance of advancing regime change for a zero chance of achieving a change in regime behavior. That sounds to me like a rigid adherence to ideology—the ideology in this case being opposition to George W. Bush’s rhetorical and sometimes successful drive to advance democracy and freedom—rather than a pragmatic attempt to take advantage of an unexpected development—the demonstrations against an election result morphing into an existential challenge to an evil regime. From the candidate of hope and change we get a commitment of hopelessness and the status quo. What do all our idealists on the left who cheered candidate Obama and are cheering the Iranian demonstrators think of this?

Is that what Obama is about here – just being against George Bush?

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