Comparing Obama to Reagan?

At Powerline Steven Hayward takes on those who compare Obama's negotiations with Iran with Reagan's negotiations with Gorbachev:

Remember one salient fact: Reagan eventually got a deal on his terms—including vigorous on-site weapons inspections that the Soviets had previously refused—by walking away from the table in Reykjavik and hanging tough on his missile defense program. (The Soviets caved on all points within a few months.) Dionne and others conveniently forget that at the time liberals were outraged that Reagan walked away from the table, while conservatives said it was his finest hour.

Reagan’s defense buildup and tough stance led the Soviets to recognize that they could not keep up, and that it was in their interest to reach significant arms reduction deals. But again—liberals like Dionne were outraged at Reagan’s arms buildup at the time, and uniformly blasted SDI. And the first half of this paragraph is wrong: it was Reagan’s prolonged stubbornness that weakened Kremlin hardliners: if Reagan had given in on SDI or on-site inspections, as the hardliners demanded Gorbachev get from him at Reykjavik, they would have been strengthened at home. It was precisely because Gorbachev came home empty-handed that he was able to tell his “hard-liners” that the game was up. Transcripts of post-Reykjavik Politburo meetings make this crystal clear.

Among other howlers, after having prattled on about her concern for human rights, Pelosi pushes back at a reporter’s question about why Kerry didn’t get the four Americans that Iran is holding on trumped up charges released as part of the deal. Pelosi squirms a bit and suggests it is a separate issue: “This is a nuclear agreement,” and not a suitable forum for human rights issues.

Once again, if liberals really wanted to follow the Reagan model, they’d recall that at every summit Reagan always passed a list of specific names of political prisoners we wanted released from Soviet jails. Even at Reykjavik, amidst the tense discussions about strategic nuclear warheads, Reagan still did this. Did John Kerry ever press the issue of human rights in general, or the four American in particular, in the Vienna talks? Someone should ask the State Department and the White House this question directly.

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