Dr. Krauthammer reports on Obama's metastatic gaffe

Charles Krauthammer says in a recent Washington Post report that an unmistakable sign that election-year discourse has entered the realm of the surreal is when a presidential candidate makes a gaffe, then, realizing it is too egregious to take back without suffering humiliation, decides to make it a centerpiece of his foreign policy.

Before the Democratic debate of July 23, Barack Obama (pictured) had never expounded upon the wisdom of meeting, without precondition, with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar al-Assad, Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong Il or the Castro brothers.

But in that debate, he was asked about doing exactly that. Unprepared, he said sure -- then got fancy, declaring the Bush administration's refusal to do so not just "ridiculous" but "a disgrace."

After that, there was no going back. So he doubled down. What started as a gaffe became policy. By now, it has become doctrine. Yet it remains today what it was on the day he blurted it out: an absurdity.

Should the president ever meet with enemies? Sometimes, but only after minimal American objectives -- i.e., preconditions -- have been met.

The Shanghai communique was largely written long before Richard Nixon ever touched down in China. Yet Obama thinks Nixon to China confirms the wisdom of his willingness to undertake a worldwide freshman-year tyrants tour.

Obama incorrectly said that Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman as presidents who met with enemies.

The woefully inexperienced Obama proved by that statement that he doesn’t know history -- or is he trying to change history?

Neither Roosevelt nor Truman ever met with any of the leaders of the Axis powers.

Obama must be referring to the pictures he's seen of Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta, and Truman and Stalin at Potsdam. Does he not know that at that time Stalin was a wartime ally?

During the subsequent Cold War, Truman never met with Stalin. Nor Mao. Nor Kim Il Sung. Truman was no fool.

Mr. Obama talks about John Kennedy meeting with Nikita Khrushchev as another example of what he intends to do.

That Vienna summit of a young, inexperienced, untested American president was disastrous, emboldening Khrushchev to push Kennedy on Berlin -- and then nearly fatally in Cuba, leading almost directly to the Cuban missile crisis.

John F. Kennedy was probably lucky to have gotten away with meeting with an enemy of the United States.

Would Barack Obama be just as lucky? Probably not since he wants to meet with several enemies of the United States. A very sobering thought!

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