During this morning's press availability to announce the endorsement of Sens. Coleman and Bond, Mayor Giuliani had some strong words for Senator Barack Obama's proposal to engage uncoditionally in personal diplomacy with the leaders of the Iranian regime. NBC's Matthew Berger reports:
Giuliani said not negotiating with Iran may be the one area that he agrees with Clinton and said the position of Obama comes from lack of experience. 'I'll use her words about it: 'naive and irresponsible,'' Giuliani said. 'The idea of begging your enemy to negotiate with you is a fundamentally flawed position.' He added, Obama 'has very little experience, and he may be displaying that.' ... 'If we learned anything from the 20th Century,' he said, 'I think what we learned is you don't beg to negotiate with dictators, tyrants and supporters of terrorists. What you do is you develop a position of real strength.' He said he believed 'that most of the Democrats will find this to be an irresponsible position,' but later said he was unsure about Clinton's position on Iran, because she had changed it. 'In deference to Sen. Obama,' Giuliani said, 'at least he sticks to his position.'
You gotta love how, in the middle of an attack on Obama, Giuliani finds a way to attack Clinton. The mayor's a total political animal - smart, fierce, and unafraid. And yet all of Giuliani's potential weaknesses in a primary and general election - his pro-choice position on abortion, his personal connections to figures like Bernie Kerik, his, um, messy personal life - are his own doing. No wonder he likes opera.