Opinion: news shocker! Rudy and hillary agree on one thing

Nov. 2, 2007 2:15 PM PT _This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts._ This just in. Despite weeks of

sniping at each other across barbed wire party lines, national presidential front-runners RUDY GIULIANI and HILLARY CLINTON agree on one thing: BARACK OBAMA is a naive young fellow when it

comes to foreign policy. (The other agreement is that a New Yorker should become president.) The former New York mayor is on ‘Political Capital with Al Hunt’ this weekend and was chuckling

over Obama’s idea of using economic incentives and possible membership in the World Trade Organization as incentives to get Iran to negotiate over abandoning its nuclear weapons program.

‘This may be one of the few areas in which I agree with Hillary Clinton,’ Giuliani said, ‘that Barack Obama in this area shows a great deal of – a great deal of inexperience and very, very

naïve. This is like, you know, begging your enemy to negotiate with you. You don’t beg your enemy to negotiate with you; you change the leverage.’ Obama, his supporters no doubt recall, was

also criticized when he said that as president he’d meet with despots without preconditions and when he suggested unilaterally bombing our ally Pakistan if it didn’t cooperate in routing al

Qaeda from isolated frontier areas. Giuliani added, ‘They totally misunderstand what Ronald Reagan did. Ronald Reagan didn’t beg the Soviets to negotiate with us; Ronald Reagan changed the

leverage; he changed the power position. Barack Obama doesn’t have the slightest idea how to do that. I mean, it’s sad actually. He’s, like, fallen all over himself begging to negotiate with

Ahmadinejad.’ In case you didn’t get what Giuliani was not exactly hinting at, he added, ‘And what Barack is trying to do is really naïve. You know, beg a terrorist supporter to come and

negotiate with you.’ (UPDATE: Late today Obama spokesman BILL BURTON, who thinks a Chicagoan should be president, fired back: ‘It’s time for tough and direct diplomacy with Iran, not

lectures from a Mayor who skipped out on the Iraq Study Group to give paid speeches, and who was naive and irresponsible enough to recommend someone with ties to convicted felons for

Secretary of Homeland Security.’) The Bloomberg program is broadcast tonight at 8 Pacific time on, not too surprisingly, Bloomberg Television, which, along with the E! Network, rebroadcasts

it many times over the weekend, when you really should be reading this non-naive blog. --Andrew Malcolm