h/t to TPM ELECTION CENTRAL
Barack Obama, in Montana, responded moments ago to McCain's ridicule of the Illinois Senator for saying that Iran is a minuscule threat compared to the former Soviet Union.
McCain said this revealed Obama's "inexperience and reckless judgment." Here's the key part of Obama's reply..."Here's the truth: the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons, and Iran doesn't have a single one. But when the world was on the brink of nuclear holocaust, Kennedy talked to Khrushchev and he got those missiles out of Cuba. Why shouldn't we have the same courage and the confidence to talk to our enemies? That's what strong countries do, that's what strong presidents do, that's what I'll do when I'm president of the United States of America."
Obama also said: "What are George Bush and John McCain afraid of"?
This sort of thing will thrill Democrats who want to see how a Democratic presidential candidate will fare if he adopts something other than the oft-employed "hawkish" rhetoric that's supposedly necessary for Dems to win an argument with Republicans about national security.
Judging by these early skirmishes between McCain and Obama -- who appears to be trying to do nothing less than redefine what it means to be "strong" and "tough" on foreign policy -- we may soon find out.
McCain seems out of his element, trying to criticize Obama while trying to forget that Ronald Reagan was, in fact, the great appeaser, at least as defined by the warped grasp of history that McCain and Bush have. This is self-evident from any reading of the history, whether it was talking to Gorbachev about eliminating nuclear weapons or giving the Iranians weapons in exchange for hostages and using the proceeds to fund the Contras in Central America. McCain knows all of this, and he treads on dangerous ground every time he criticizes Obama--he might as well be criticizing Reagan.
Obama effectively uses "common sense" to deflect these attacks.
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