Should we talk to our enemies? Sen. John McCain in recent days has said Sen. Barack Obama’s willingness to open dialogue with leaders from Iran to Cuba shows his “inexperience and reckless judgment,” but it is McCain who oversimplifies. Presidents from Nixon to Reagan to George H.W. Bush have all talked to our enemies — with the right preconditions — and Obama has vowed to do nothing more or less.

Talk, in and of itself, is diplomacy. Talk is not by definition appeasement, whatever President Bush and McCain might like to pretend. It’s what grown-ups do, before all else, to solve problems.

Obama says he would be willing to meet with Iranian leaders, but only with “sufficient preparations,” and he would do “everything” in his powers to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons. ...

That, to us, sounds like grown-up talk. ...

We’re not sure who Bush’s role models have been for an emotionally childish foreign policy that too often amounts to nothing more than threats and force. Perhaps Charles Bronson.

But Obama promises to take his cue from the likes of JFK and Reagan, two tough Cold War warriors who never stopped talking to the enemy. Obama likes to quote Kennedy’s famous dictum: “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.”

What a grown-up thing to say.

Chicago Sun-Times

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