The day after the debate, the campaign couldn’t find experts willing to go out and defend Obama’s stance. The consensus in the foreign policy establishment was that Obama had made a blunder, and that was mirrored by a political class in Washington who felt that anything other than reflexive “toughness” on Iran was a losing proposition. Diplomacy, apparently, is “weak”; refusing to engage in diplomacy, by the inverse property, is “tough.” Never mind that Iran was steadily advancing its nuclear program.
