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Over at the Mothership, Ilan Goldenberg makes a good point on Iran. The campaign will see an argument between two competing positions. The first, McCain's, argues that there should be no direct engagement or negotiations until after Iran accedes to our demands that they shut down all aspects of their nuclear program. The second, Obama's, argues that getting Iran to cooperate with our priorities is the point of direct engagement and negotiations, and a serious policy to shut down their nuclear program will require sitting down with the regime's leadership. For a long time, Democrats were afraid of making this argument publicly, which is the mindset that led Hillary Clinton to jump on Obama when he said he'd sit down and talk with the Iranians without preconditions. Obama won the primary, though, and has continued making the case for his strategy. The result?
A recent Gallup poll found that despite extremely low opinions of Iran, 59 percent believe it's a good idea for the president to meet with the Iranian leadership. A Public Agenda/Foreign Affairs poll taken this spring found that 47 percent of Americans believed that establishing better relations with Iran through diplomacy was the one best way for the United States to deal with Iran while 40 percent supported economic sanctions, military threats or military action. This represented a 21 point swing from the fall of 2007 when only 35 percent supported diplomatic talks as the best option and 49 percent argued for more aggressive policies.Additionally, as Goldenberg points out, Obama's position is supported by the majority of foreign policy experts. Even some neoconservatives, like Richard Kagan, have come around on the issue (though in part because they think the talks will fail, and the US will have a more legitimate case for war). Point being, on this issue, like on many others, McCain sits outside the expert consensus and outside the mainstream of public opinion. His hawkish position may be deliciously mavericky, but it's also wrong and unpopular.
