Obama’s relationship to Wright is paradigmatic. Obama’s own views are not precisely Wright’s, but Obama understands and is attracted to Wright’s radicalism and wants to win at least a gruff sort of understanding and even acceptance of it from Americans at large. What’s scary is that this is all-too-similar to the way Obama thinks about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Bashar Asad. Obama may not agree with them either, but he feels as though he understands their grievances well enough to bridge the gap between these leaders and the American people. That is why Obama is willing to speak to Ahmadinejad and Asad without preconditions.

Can we fairly make analogies between internal American splits and differences between nations? No we cannot. But that is precisely Obama’s error–and it is pervasive on the dovish left. The world of nations is in fact a scarcely-hidden anarchy of conflicting interests and powers. Yet liberals treat the globe as if its one great big "multicultural" nation in which reasonable folks can simply sit down and rationally iron out their differences. Obama sees himself as a great global reconciler, on exactly the same pattern as he sees himself as a national reconciler–the man who bridges not only all races, but all nations. Unfortunately, what reconciliation means for Obama is getting Americans to accept folks who don’t like them, and to strike bargains (on disadvantageous terms, I would argue) with those who mean to do us serious harm.