Today's WaPo contains a mostly vapid yet condescendingly condemnatory piece [author P. Bacon w/help from Sh. Murray and (!) a polling analyst] on what Mr. Bacon perceives as Obama's failure to break 'new ground.'

Yet it only took me a bare moment to recall, compare and contrast the startlingly transformative foreign policy approach ["lets have one!"] being put forward by Mr. Obama with the continuing non-policy, and even more startling ignorance of US diplomatic history of having no policy, on display in John McCain's recent non-proliferation speech. A portion of that speech was excerpted and critiqued in the Washington Monthly. I found myself channeling Colbert but with unseemly sarcasm as my letter to Mr. Bacon et al suggested he return to first principles of journalistic integrity and spread some actual information to readers through use of research - even from secondary sources. I directed him to both of the below sources so he might enjoy the same "Ahah!" moment that I had in regards to Mr. Obama.

Below is a short excerpt from the Wash Monthly article -I strongly recommend BOTH the longer original AND the link therein to the Council on Foreign Relations' 2006 interview with noted [CIA/NSC/State] policy wonk Flynt Leverett on US failure to have a policy towards Iran.

[Hint: McCain actually thinks we've HAD a policy. Oy.]

Excerpt and both URLs:

on how US failure in diplomacy with Iran has made us less safe:

http://www.cfr.org/publication/10326/

above cited in Wash Monthly[Hilzoy] "Have We Lost Our Collective Marbles" on absence of reportage on actual information rather than whether a candidate mistook Buchenwald for Auschwitz:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/

McCain's nonproliferation speech, and his break with Bush on North Korea, were nowhere to be found.

I suppose one explanation for this might be that people are more interested in gaffes than in policy wonkery. But that can't be it. After all, McCain made a much more serious gaffe in his speech yesterday, but very few people noticed it:

"In John McCain's speech today he says something very very puzzling:

Many believe all we need to do to end the nuclear programs of hostile governments is have our president talk with leaders in Pyongyang and Tehran, as if we haven't tried talking to these governments repeatedly over the past two decades.

So McCain thinks that the President of the United States has been negotiating with the Iranians for the past two decades? Huh? Does McCain not understand that the stated policy of the U.S. government since April 7, 1980 has been to NOT TALK TO THE IRANIANS. And that we have not negotiated with Iran over their nuclear weapons program."

Personally, I think being wrong about official US policy towards Iran, and about whether recent history shows that negotiating with them won't work, is more serious than being wrong about precisely which Nazi concentration camp your great-uncle helped liberate.