REAGAN VS. OBAMA – QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 8:44 A.M. ET:   Jackson Diehl, in the Washington Post, performs a very useful journalistic service by comparing the diplomatic techniques of Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. 

Is it fair to say that Obama’s handling of Iran is comparable to Reagan’s treatment of the Soviet Union?

A narrow answer is yes, in the sense Obama described: Reagan might well have concluded that a bargain postponing Iran’s emergence as a nuclear threshold state for 15 years was worthwhile regardless of the nature of the regime. Beyond that, however, Reagan’s answer to the Soviet threat was virtually the opposite of Obama’s for Iran. In that difference lies the strongest critique of the policy this president has pursued.

The conclusion?

...Obama’s Iran policy more closely resembles the realpolitik of Nixon with China, as The Post’s Charles Lane has pointed out. The rewards, if any, will come in Iranian cooperation in defeating the Islamic State, or in enabling political solutions — and an American exit — in Iraq and Syria. Even that is a long shot, according to most of the administration’s own experts, who expect Iranian aggression to escalate rather than diminish.

In the end, Obama’s policy could produce a very different legacy than that of Reagan. A generation later, the Gipper’s arms negotiations with Moscow look like a modest success — but his contribution to the collapse of Soviet communism was an epochal achievement. Obama may be able to point, 15 years from now, to an Iran that remains non-nuclear. But the most likely effect of his engagement policy is not the implosion of the Islamic republic, but its perpetuation.

COMMENT:  Read all the stuff that goes between those two quotes.  It really amounts to a devastating portrait of our egotistical, immature president.

Obama was taken soooo seriously when he came to office, the darling of the sixties liberals.  Reagan was laughed at by the same crowd. 

Only fools today laugh at Reagan.  Only fools today think Obama is a darling.

July 20, 2015