Where's the Pushover the GOP Promised Us?

Throughout the campaign, Obama's detractors suggested Obama would be a foreign policy pushover, talking with adversaries "without preconditions" and making a lot of hay out of Biden's comment that Obama would be tested early.

So sorry! It's only Obama's fourth day of being President-Elect, and he's already miffed the Iranians with his firm stance, reiterated at his press conference yesterday, that a nuclear Iran is "unacceptable."

And now the Iranians are whining about Obama not being the pushover they hoped for, in a silly attempt to throw his message of change back into his face:

[Parliamentary Speaker] Ali Larijani said Saturday that Obama should apply his campaign message of change to U.S. dealings with Iran.

"Obama must know that the change that he talks about is not simply a superficial changing of colors or tactics," Larijani said in comments carried by the semi-official Mehr News Agency.

"What is expected is a change in strategy, not the repetition of objections to Iran's nuclear program, which will be taking a step in the wrong direction."
Source: CNN.com

Lesson for the world: Obama is an intelligent, thoughtful leader who will listen respectfully to your point of view and discuss it with you. That's a lot more than Bush ever gave you. But don't think he's going to throw our national security out the window.

In other foreign policy news, CNN reports that Denis McDonough, Obama's senior foreign policy adviser, has clarified that contrary to a claim on the Polish president's website, Obama is not committed to a missile shield in Eastern Europe.

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev had warned earlier this week that the Russians would respond to the missile shield with missile deployments of their own near Poland.