Marc Ambinder looks at the exchange last night between Barack Obama and John McCain on Henry Kissinger and Iran. In short, Obama claimed that Kissinger agrees with him — not McCain — on whether the US should engage Iran without preconditions. Kissinger responded with a statement last night. “Senator McCain is right. I would not recommend the next President of the United States engage in talks with Iran at the Presidential level. My views on this issue are entirely compatible with the views of my friend Senator John McCain.” Ambinder accuses Kissinger of “a debater’s trick: answering a charge that was not leveled.” That may be technically true, but Kissinger’s confusion is understandable given how much Barack Obama mischaracterized his own views and McCain’s. Said Obama: “Senator McCain mentioned Henry Kissinger, who’s one of his advisers, who, along with five recent secretaries of state, just said that we should meet with Iran — guess what — without precondition. This is one of your own advisers…But I will point out that I was called naive when I suggested that we need to look at exploring contacts with Iran. And you know what? President Bush recently sent a senior ambassador, Bill Burns, to participate in talks with the Europeans around the issue of nuclear weapons.” This is highly misleading — the kind of distortion that would have elicited howls of protest from the New York Times and others if McCain had made it. First, Obama wasn’t called naive because he “suggested that we need to look at exploring contacts with Iran.” He was called naive — by Hillary Clinton among others — for saying that he would meet without conditions, in the first year of his administration, with the “leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.” Second, the Bush administration was already engaging Iran at a lower level when Obama said this — so the meetings between Burns, the Europeans and the Iranians did not initiate contacts with Iran. Third, McCain said at the time that he had “no problem…whatsoever” with Burns meeting his Iranian counterpart. He added: “We have many negotiations with many countries…throughout the world,” but said he would not meet without conditions with Ahmadinejad. Ambinder concludes that “there is very little daylight between Barack Obama and John McCain on how and when to negotiate with Iran.” I think the issue is simpler than he makes it. Barack Obama would meet with the Iranians at the presidential level without preconditions. McCain would not. As Obama’s website boasts: “Obama is the only major candidate who supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy without preconditions.” That sentence complicates Obama’s case. When John McCain pointed out that Kissinger would not advocate unconditional meetings at “that presidential top level,” Obama responded quickly. And dishonestly. “Nobody’s talking about that,” he said. He might want to have a talk with his webmaster to have that part of his website changed.
