One substantive point that the Obama/Clinton spat has laid bare is the odd, almost talismanic, power that "negotiating" has amassed in the Bush era. Because the current administration blatantly refuses to negotiate, the willingness to meet with non-allied, even hostile, leaders has become a signifier for being "Not George W. Bush" in foreign policy terms. That, in a sense, is what Clinton and Obama are fighting about. Hence Obama's rejoinder that "I don't want a continuation of Bush-Cheney. I don't want Bush-Cheney-lite."
On the actual topic of negotiations, Obama and Clinton don't, as far as I can tell, differ much. Clinton, the supposed anti-negotiations side of the fight, has said, “You don’t refuse to talk to bad people. I think life is filled with uncomfortable situations where you have to deal with people you might not like. I’m sort of an expert on that. I have consistently urged the president to talk to Iran and talk to Syria. I think it’s a sign of strength, not weakness.”
The mere willingness to negotiate, however, isn't actually that telling of a characteristic. Bush's intransigence on the subject has made it seem a bigger deal than it really is. But you can negotiate as part of liberal, even dovish, approach, and you can negotiate as a step to going to war. Clinton justified her willingness to negotiate with Iran to AIPAC by telling them that "I also want to send a message, if we ever do have to take more drastic action, to the rest of the world that we exhausted all possibilities." Such negotiations wouldn't be terribly different than the current White House's policies. They're just part of a smarter PR strategy.
So to say that Clinton and Obama are saying the same things on whether they'd meet with Chavez isn't the same as saying that they'd say the same thing to Chavez. The mere willingness to negotiate just isn't very meaningful. It's only Bush's atrociously bad example that has turned so basic and neutral a tool of foreign policy as negotiations into a signifier of deeply progressive instincts.
