Dictator Cat Remains Out of the Bag

Barack Obama was speaking off the cuff last summer when he deemed President Bush’s refusal to meet with dictators “a disgrace,” but “what started as a gaffe became policy,” Charles Krauthammer writes in the Washington Post. "By now, it has become doctrine." And whatever it's called, he writes, "It remains today what it was on the day he blurted it out: an absurdity."

“No one is debating the need for contacts,” Krauthammer allows, pausing briefly before continuing to excoriate the candidate. "The debate is over the stupidity of elevating rogue states and their tyrants, easing their isolation, and increasing their leverage by granting them unconditional meetings with the president of the world's superpower."