Mmmhmm. I'm fairly certain Obama's meaning was far different than you've made it out to be; and you ignored his reference of JFK in making your argument.

I'm sure, in any case, it's at least as innocent as Hillary's comparison of Obama versus McCain.

I didn't ignore JFK.  However, I did point out that he has been dead for 45 years.

There were actually a lot of things about JFK's foreign policy that I like a lot--he reached out to South America, and even to Africa a little, and of course Europeans loved him (although that was mainly for his and Jackie's glamor)--but on foreign policy JFK was best known as a staunch old-line anti-Communist just like Reagan.

And frankly, I don't give a good goddam what Obama's secret hidden meaning which I'm sure will be explained to us by his surrogates was.  It MATTERS who people's heroes are!

So much Change about BO, hummmm GOP foreign policy in Dem Primary. Don't forget Carter is living Super D. Good Luck BO and his supporters in Denver.

Reagen is widely perceived as ending the Cold War, and is generally regarded very strongly in regard to foreign policy. And he certainly wasn't too chickenshit to meet with Russia. The point Obama's making is not that he endorses their policies, but rather meeting with foreign leaders we do not necessarily like USED to be standard practice in the US, including up to 2000 with Bill Clinton and the Israeli/Palestinian peach talks at Camp David. Regardless of what you think of their policies, Bush Sr. set up all kinds of diplomatic coalitions with the Kuwait crisis. Whatever you feel about their politics, they way they conducted their foreign was LEAGUES better than the Lone Ranger bullshit Dubuya's hooked us into the last 7 years and McCain wants to continue.

Realism is the think-tank school of foreign policy thinking that guided the United States foreign policy through the whole Cold War.  There's a link on it at Wikipedia.  It's a very complicated issue, and it breaks down into many different subsets of Realism.

Political Realism

Obama was not talking about "realism" in the way you mean, which, I think, is pragmatism.

The ideology that emerged to oppose Realism was Neoconservatism.  

(Note: A lot of people don't seem to realize that Neoconservatism is a foreign-policy thinktank strategy and not a domestic political movement like conservatism.)

Haven't we esentially  been mopping up the foreign policies of Reagan and Bush Sr. for the last 6 years? Why would Obama want to emulate people who hold high responsibility (along with the son Bush, Cheney,Rumsfeld) for the war that Obama says he was against?

Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz have been the behind the scenes players in the ALL the Republican Presidents since Nixon and The 'architects' of the New Word Order, for Bush Sr. and PNAC (new name for New World Order) for junior.

I'm sure the first part of the sentence was to pander to the Reagan Democrats of the Reagan/Bush administration (called 'Independents' today), and see if he couldn't pick up a handful of I hate McCain Republicans and couldn't leave out JFK because he got a few members of that family to back him and OLD people remember JFK with fondness, but not for his foreign policy.
The second part the quote you used was a swipe at McCain, Bush and Hillary (some democrats),and to lump them together like they all equate to having the same policy. I doubt many people have read the 'force resolution' with the 10+ IF's and then, and only then to use force against Sadam.

No thanks- I don't want to return to the foreign policies of Reagan and Bush or JFK for that matter. Who is giving this man his foreign policy advice or is this just 'campaigning'?

If he doesn't feel he can praise President Clinton because he's running against him--not that I agree with that, but I could at least see where he's coming from--can't he at least praise Carter?  Or must we leave all living Democratic Presidents out to dry?

I just can't wait to hear tomorrow about how brilliantly post-politics this all is, how Obama is 2 steps ahead or the pack, co-opting the Republicans, ju-jitsuing them, etc.--because I'm really really sure I'll hear it--but if words count why can't we stay with the actual words instead of the multi-step interpretations?  I always thought that "words count" and "words have meaning" were two phrases with similar meanings, but I'm starting to hear different.

Unfortunately the Hostage Crisis in many peoples muinds defined Carter. Carter has been a superior Ex-President and liked him but at times linked him to gas lines myself.
He was not about to praise Clinton.  I am an Obama supporter, but come on the guy is a politician.  I am not of ther belief that he is a Demi-God.

He is talking about the Neo-Cons and their view that might is right.  He is reeling in all those Republicans that just changed registration in PA.

So he's making statements about the general direction of his foreign policy so as to attrack a group of local voters?  You think highly of him there, eh?

Is it really politically expedient, anyway, to praise Republican Presidents during a Democratic primary?  Aren't there some Democrats he's trying to reel in, too? I'm sorry, but my knowledge of Obama's inner self is not quite so sophisticated as to excuse me from worrying about whether he actually will run foreign policy like Reagan and Bush, as opposed to automatically assuming he's just yackin' for political purposes.

But regardless of all that, this naming Republicans as exemplars just doesn't work.  As I said above, it's not at all like Clinton saying McCain is qualified to be C-I-C.*  She's saying he has the ability to do the job, not that he's an exemplar of how to do the job.  Obama is actually saying that they pursue the right policies.  He's saying his foreign policy will be like theirs.  

That's several steps beyond what Clinton did with McCain when she merely complimented him personally as capable. That's the kind of clean high-minded politics that leads to citizen engagement in government, where you compliment your opponent as a human being but then go on to show that, while he is capable and not an embarrassment to the millions of Americans who support him, his ideas are wrong.  It's exactly the kind of campaign that Bill Clinton ran against Bob Dole in 1996, not this personal tearing-down stuff that Republicans and Axelrod are into.

If Democrats don't stick up for each other, Republicans sure aren't going to stick up for us.  Parties need their heroes, and they won't have them unless the leaders who follow stick up for the leaders who went before them.  Look how careful the Republicans are to praise Reagan.  Reagan was in fact a stumbling mediocrity, but thanks to the cult that has been built around him, he remains highly politically influential 20 years after he left the Presidency.  Democratic leaders who care about the Party's brand need to think about their predecessors--as well as about what their successors will say about them.

*FTR, I don't approve of her saying that.  It's just not in this league.

Obama points out the difference between the broad coalition that Bush 1.0 build to liberate Quwait and the solo war that Bush 2.0 started in Iraq, the difference between Reagan who was brave and bold enough to meet with Gorbatchov without preconditions and HRC who will continue the "punish them by not talking to them" policy of Bush and 2.0.

So yes, it's realism, he's talking about.