by Joe Honick

Some many months ago, I offered a piece reciting what I called BAD or Bipartisan Asinine Diplomacy as it then related to Washington trying to play tough with China.  It’s time for another shot because those folks in Beijing must be laughing their heads off at what’s going on here again, this time over a particular person who has been resisting the regime there.

In 2008, when then candidate Obama took the unusual step to meet with Iraqi power folks during the campaign, he was warned by the Republicans that we only have one president at a time, and he is the “negotiator in chief” as well.

Comes now another especially sensitive time in U.S.-Chinese relations, and guess who has decided to avoid presenting at least the appearance of a “united” American leadership?  Why none other than the same Republicans who defended former president Bush’s turf a few years back, and, today, showing us to be in major disarray as a bunch of political chest thumpers…when it was more than possible the matter of the popular Chinese dissident could have been concluded with him and his family on their way to America.

Read the full story (sub req'd) | Subscribe to O'Dwyer's