We've been reading all week about how the Democratic presidential candidates didn't want to meet with those "rogue leaders" over at the Democratic Leadership Council.
But one Clinton did go and speak to their conference: Former President Bill Clinton.
There, according to David Paul Kuhn, he exercised some diplomacy about diplomacy.
Here's the money 'graph:
If the 42nd president was speaking in any way as a proxy for his wife’s campaign, it’s a pretty clear sign that Obama has succeeded in his pushback against Hillary Clinton. In response to her criticism that it was “irresponsible” to give the foreign leaders a propaganda victory by meeting with a U.S. president without forcing concessions in advance, Obama said Clinton sounded like President Bush in refusing to practice diplomacy with adversaries.
More after the jump...
The report also stated:
“We have to get back to more diplomacy,” Clinton said, adding: “I’ve heard no fewer than four of our candidates say in the last month, remind us that in the middle of the cold war, in the darkest hours, we never stopped talking to the Soviets at some level. So no one disputes that.”
And...
Bill Clinton said people could interpret the candidates’ answers for themselves, but indicated he did not see much disagreement on “the big question, And that is: should we have more diplomacy? The answer is yes. Then you can parse their answers to the specific questions and decide who you think is right.”
Here was the lede on the story:
Bill Clinton said Monday that he had no interest in wading into “that little spat” that broke out last week between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama over whether the next president should commit to meeting with the leader of several U.S. adversaries.
Then, in the next sentence, the former president waded right in -- in a way that sounded like the Clintons are seeking a truce with Obama in the debate over the proper role of presidential diplomacy when dealing with assorted bad guys on the world stage.
I have some interpretations as to why he did that. But I'll hand the microphone over to the rest of you first.