At the Youtube debates, Obama said that he would personally meet "without preconditions" with adversarial world leaders. This response was the "correct" answer to the questioner on Youtube. Moreover, it resonated with non-insignificant portion of voters. While Obama's response and actions may have been politically wise in the short term, it was actually a very dumb thing to say if he is to be President.

The problem with Obama's statement is two-fold. First, it commits himself to an extremely and excessively weak position in any negotiations. Second, he emboldens foreign leaders to misuse any high-level meetings with the US President.

Useful negotiations require both parties be willing to putting something on the table and willing to deal in good faith. If these conditions are not met, it is almost never a good idea to hold negotiations (especially if you are the party with something on the table and are negotiating in good faith). However, Obama's statement literally says that meeting these conditions are not necessary for a direct Presidential meeting. At best, this could open the door to several worthless Presidential meetings with adversarial foreign leaders in which no progress is made because the foreign leader is unwilling to put anything on the table. However, more concerning is the possibility that our adversaries will misuse the meetings "without preconditions" to grandstand, diminish the President, denigrate the U.S., or raise their national or international profile.

Obama apparently realizes that he backed himself into a foreign policy corner with his statement. Therefore, now that he (basically) has the nomination, Obama and his advisors wordsmithing by saying that he would require "preparations" before speaking to foreign leaders. Hopefully, by the time his is President, Obama admits that some preconditions are a wise idea.

president are two different creatures; sometimes even if its a president stumping for re-election.

Sometimes in the heat of a question and answer session, when your mind is whirling with a million things, you find yourself uttering a slice of gibberish that your OPPOSITION will thereafter treat as if it were your official policy position etched in stone.

This has happened to Obama and McCain -- oh and to that other person that currently the DNC is doing its level best to destroy while disenfranchising half of the Democratic Party . . . now what was her name? Hmph! Oh well, it may come to me eventually.

obama is NOW backtracking and said he is talking about diplomacy....but he DID say he would meet with them personally.

so the guy is caught in ANOTHER lie

like the one he told when he said in 20 yrs he NEVER heard wrights hate speech....hell that didnt even pass the SMELL test

you cannot ADMIT to yourself that obama and his lawyers have been working day and nite to keep the votes from florida and michigan from EVER counting

wonder WHAT about THAT you dont understand

oh thats right

you cant SEE the truth when you are so far up obama's bum

the more labels obama USES to put on those who dont support him

the more he will lose support

do you suppose that ANYONE in west virginia will vote for him after he and the press made them out to be some kind of hillbilly's that are stupid???.....if I lived there i would walk ten miles to VOTE AGAINST obama....thumbing his nose at WHOLE demographics of voters is NOT the way to win the presidency

the guy is completely NAIVE and the dnc isnt helping him to understand either, they are so far up obama's bum

1. Obama was not on the ballot in Michigan. If I were a voter in Michigan and wanted to vote for Obama, wouldn't I be disenfranchised if the Hillary voters were counted?

2. Obama did not campaign in Florida and was not as well known to voters there.

There is no way, short of a revote, that we can know what the voters of either state have to say about which candidate they'd choose, given a fair election.

The state legislatures in both states are to blame for the problem.

need to be aware that the moment Hillary bows out of the nomination race She and Obama will be sweet talking those uneducated, racist, White, knuckle-draggers and those and those enraged feminists like nobody's business and many of them will obediently swill of the Obamacrat kool-aide.

I'm estimating that between fifteen to twenty percent of insulted and angry democrats across the nation,k however, will NOT play the DNC's games and go back to being obedient little fools.

We shall have to wait and see how this plays out.

How many democratic candidates were on the ballot, smart guy?

He wasn't on the ballot because of the failure of the Michigan legislature and the DNC (and the RNC as well) to come to an agreement about changing the date of their primary.

The results of the Michigan primary are in no way reflective of the will of the voters.

Why were there only 3 democrats on the ballot? Are the voters who wanted to vote for Obama disenfranshised if the election results are used but they didn't get to vote for their candidate?