Doing it differently

Barack Obama has always been an independent thinker. He of course opposed the war in Iraq, and he8217;s built a team of national-security advisers who disproportionately took the same, then-unpopular antiwar view. But as a presidential candidate8230; his real break with convention may have begun with a gaffe. For the better part of a generation, top Democratic politicians have followed8230; the same set of unwritten rules in their approach to foreign affairs: match GOP 8220;toughness8221;8230; avoid taking positions that could be criticised as weak. So at the YouTube debate on July 23, 2007, when Obama was asked whether he would be willing to meet 8220;without precondition8230; with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea8221;, the right answer, conventionally speaking, was a qualified 8220;no.8221; But Obama answered in the affirmative8230;

Few observers believed that Obama genuinely intended to break new ground with his response8230; The Clinton campaign dutifully pressed the attack the next day, calling Obama8217;s statement 8220;irresponsible and frankly naive.8221; But then a funny thing happened. Obama8217;s team did not try to qualify or, in political parlance, 8220;clarify8221; his remark, and no one said he misspoke8230; This position really was a departure for Obama. Despite his stand against the war in 2002, he had since hewed closely to the party line on foreign affairs. The only substantive thing he had to say about Iraq policy during his famous 2004 convention speech was: 8220;When we send our young men and women into harm8217;s way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they are going; to care for their families while they8217;re gone; to tend to the soldiers upon their return; and to never, ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world.8221; This merely echoed the bland competence-and-execution argument of mainstream party thinking8230;

Mercifully, now his general approach is pragmatic. More to the point, it doesn8217;t heed the usual political advice that says Democrats should recoil in fear from anything that could be painted as weakness8230; Obama8217;s campaign is betting on the idea that the disaster in Iraq has helped make what it calls 8220;the politics of fear8221; obsolete, and that the time is ripe for something else.

Excerpted from Matthew Yglesias8217;s 8216;The accidental foreign policy8217; in The Atlantic