Obama gave what he thought was a great answer; Clinton saw it as not paying enough attention to detail or the fine print--what an inexperienced and unseasoned leader in international politics would do.

In every debate, Obama has proven himself to be unable to grasp the parameters and specifics of a question. As a consequence, his answers are often ill-suited and open to exploitation.

With an eye to the general election, why should the Democrats elect someone whose rookie carelessness makes him vulnerable to ruinous accusations and characterizations?

For example, the day after the YouTube debate, the Miami Herald had a headline that read:

Obama, Edwards say they would meet with Castro, Chavez.

(http://www.miamiherald.com/579/story/179947.html)

It doesn't take much imagination to envision these same headlines featured ad nauseam within the deluge of GOP campaign ads hitting the Florida airwaves morphing Democratic Presidential nominee Obama with Castro and Ahmadinejad. Tell me again the upside for the Democrats in needlessly angering the Cubans and the Jews?

Why should the Democrats elect a candidate who would so recklessly hand Florida's electoral votes to the GOP, and on a silver-platter, nonetheless?

The GOP will eat Obama alive on this one.

"The general principle that I was laying out is that we should not be afraid as America to meet with anybody" (Barack Obama).

And when did Hugo Chávez become the mortal enemy of the United States, he has a problem with George W. Bush, and who can blame him for that, and I do remember Bill Clinton meeting with him.

I find the question problematic for including a range of leaders from elected presidents to wanton dictators. Iran, Syria, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela , Venezuela?  That country certainly doesn't belong on the list.

"The Bush administration's policy is to say that we will not talk to these countries unless they meet various preconditions. That's their explicit policy," Obama said.

"Nobody expects that you would suddenly just sit down with them for coffee without having done the appropriate groundwork. But the question was, would you meet them without preconditions, and part of the Bush doctrine has been to say no," he said.

"You'll have to ask Senator Clinton what differentiates her position from theirs," Obama added.

"The fact of the matter is when we talk to world leaders, it give us the opportunity to speak about our ideals, our values and our interests, and I am not afraid to have that conversation with anybody," he said.

Obama says Clinton has foreign policy like Bush's

And Big Tent isn't helping to spin this for the Hillary campaign?  Yeah right.

I understand the political opening that Obama gave the Clinton campaign, but I also see the folly in the United States continuing to act as if it's above the rest of the world.  A president who is willing to meet with any of these leaders in the hopes of bringing about real change, is a president who wants to move forward into a new century, and not drag us back to the Cold War mindset where we demonized those we are at odds with.  

A president who would meet with Fidel Castro, or his brother, is a president who has a good chance of normalizing relations with that country, something that should've happened decades ago.  The people of Cuba suffer badly as a result of our political stance, but it hasn't hurt the Castro regime at all.  And the people of North Korea are starving to death in the tens of thousands every year, while the United States and China sit by and do nothing.  It's time for a US president to start doing what US presidents were meant to do, move the world forward into a better tomorrow and stand up for the people.

Wake me when something actually happens, when a real and imaginative idea and plan of action are proposed.

If pundits don't shape public opinion anymore, then neither do campaigning politicians.