McCain Makes Me Miss Richard Nixon

Yesterday I praised Obama's reticence about injecting himself into the Iranian protest situation, which could only be harmed by our mouthing off. I wrote that "most conservative administrations would be pounding podiums and spewing indignation, regardless of realpolitik outcome." And right on cue, here's John McCain (as reported in Voice of America News):

"[Obama] should speak out that this is a corrupt, fraud, sham of an election. The Iranian people have been deprived of their rights. We support them in their struggle against a repressive, oppressive regime. And they should not be subjected to four more years of Ahmadinejad and the radical Muslim clerics."

Whatever happened to conservatives who actually knew how to handle stuff? I find myself very nearly missing Richard Nixon. The guy didn't have an honest or ethical bone in his body, and I deplored his foreign policy, but at least he had the intellectual maturity to recognize that diplomacy requires sober weighing of strategies, and a disciplined approach to achieving the outcome best serving your interests. So what's with these current guys, and their undisciplined, pinheaded predisposition to simply let rip? What happened to all those competent, crewcut, Republican squares?

Finally, I'll leave you with this amazing quote (in The Guardian) from an Ahmadinejad supporter, which strikes me as sincere as it is inexplicable:

"My son was martyred in the Iran-Iraq war. I don't want to lose our Islam. We did not participate in 1979, in the revolution, to have this kind of freedom that Mousavi supporters claim that they want."