How would Barack Obama deal with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? The first clue was in how he dealt with Hillary Clinton.
No, I’m not equating Hillary with Holocaust-denying thugs but this is Obama’s first high profile negotiation with a tough adversary. How’d he do?
At first blush, Obama’s team made a number of poor negotiating moves. In Florida, the Clinton forces asked for a full seating of the delegation based on the popular vote of the unsanctioned primary. One of the cardinal rules of negotiating is to remember that at the end of the day there will be an overpowering urge to split the difference. If you want to end up at a 5, and your adversary has opened with a 10, you’d better start with 1.
By that logic, when Hillary asked for it all, Obama should have demanded that none of the delegation be seated. Instead, he suggested that they seat the full delegation with half voting rights. This is called “negotiating with yourself,” though President Bush might call it “appeasement.”
By the normal intro-to-negotiation rules, Obama made another serious error in Michigan. Obama’s campaign viewed the entire Michigan primary as illegitimate because he wasn’t on the ballot. Obama’s forces proposed a 50-50 split, in effect saying, the popular vote was irrelevant so we might as well go halvsies, almost as if the primary had never happened. Obama apparently had the votes to win on the 50-50 proposal but never forced it. Was he afraid to use his power? Bill Kristol might ask. Instead, he capitulated to a compromise (Hillary 69, Obama 59) that Hillary’s people then used to prove that the delegate count did relate to the popular vote and that she was robbed of 4 delegates.
Negotiationg with yourself. Appeasement. Fear of using power. Obama seemed to have made a number of mistakes that would make him easy pickings for a ruthless dictator.
On the other hand….
Obama won.
He maneuvered the rules meetings in a way that guaranteed his winning the nomination. Look at how he did, and you see a different picture about his negotiating skills.
First, ironically, he did not engage in direct negotiations with Hillary Clinton. Everything was done through surrogates. When he saw an opportunity for a credible third party to take ownership of the outcome in a way that helped him, he did. So even though the 69-59 split in Michigan was problematic for him, the fact that it was proposed by the Michigan Democratic Party – including its Hillary-supporting governor – helped tremendously. According to press accounts, the 69-59 difference was arrived at when the party officials split the difference between Obama’s 64-64 proposal and Hillary’s 73-47. Obama got a split-the-difference result, but with the imprimatur of the Michigan state party.
As for Florida, you’re never supposed to start with your “outcome” position – unless you know the other side is going to accept it. It turns out that the committee DID accept that proposal – unanimously – and the Obama forces undoubtedly knew they would. This enabled them to look far more reasonable and still get what they wanted.
In short, he quickly abandoned particular principles – these primaries didn’t count, we shouldn’t change the rules in the middle of the game – as part of small, pragmatic compromises that got him the bigger prize He used the assets he had, in a quiet, deft way, and ended up getting almost everything he wanted.
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posted June 3, 2008 at 7:58 pm
In any kind of conflict there are two things to consider: tactical moves and strategic moves. Obama demonstrated how to be flexible with tactics to insure the outcome at the strategic level. The strategy involved winning the nomination. The tactics were to present a flexible, reasonable solution to the Florida and Michigan problems. In doing so Obama not only insured achievement of the strategic goal (winning the nomination), he also allowed his opponent to take what should have been a small tactical victory and turn it into a loss with her carping and unreasonable reaction.
If this is an example of how he would approach the Middle East and Persian Gulf conflicts, I would be more than happy to seem him in the White House.
posted June 4, 2008 at 11:12 am
Hussein Obamarama wants to negotiate with Iran.
Ahmadinejad says that his nuke ambitions are not up for negotiation.
Now what?
posted June 4, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Hussein Obamarama’s foreign policy “credentials.” What very little there is, if any.
What credibility will he have with other countries? From what credibility strength will he negotiate???
What are his accomplishments [not accomplishing riding on somebody else's coattails]?
posted June 4, 2008 at 5:17 pm
First of all, I am having a good chuckle over the comparison of Hillary Clinton the nomination denier to Ahmadinejad the Holocaust denier.
We don’t really know Obama’s heuristic for the Florida vote. He could have calculated (or not) that Clinton would raise the issue of yet more delegates and appear petty and unelectable in the process.
In a theoretical conversation with Iran, I really don’t want the conversation to start with “We demand that you have zero nuclear weapons” versus “We need 10,000 missiles to defend the Iranian people” only to end with a compromise at 5,000.
In a real conversation with the leaders of a theocratic state (and for Iran, this may not mean conversations with Ahmadinejad) it’s essential to know whether there’s even any hope of compromise. If Iran construes its military activity as following commands of Allah, compromise will never be possible except in terms of keeping the commands of Allah.
Meaning no offense to Islam, I would similarly suggest that Hillary’s universe affords an absolute role for the demands of Hillary. Conversations with Hillary afford only resolutions in terms of the will of Hillary.
Sometimes you are between a rock and a hard place, so there may be conversations Obama will have to have whether he can win or not. Both Hillary Clinton and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be the people he’s talking with. Hillary as she approaches the finish line and Iran after it actually has those nuclear weapons.
posted June 5, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Obama might not get the chance to negotiate with Iran. Because Duh will probably blow it up first. And get us blown up in the process. But I don’t blams the Iranians for wanting nuclear weapons. They saw Duh attack neighboring Iraq for no reason whatsoever.
In response to Waffle and Mr. Incredible, we can’t help be safer once we are rid of Duh, even if InSain gets in and not Obama.
posted June 8, 2008 at 4:47 pm
When I hear someone refer to our current President as “Duh,” I’m reminded of a famous line Gerald Ford said on Saturday Night Live, “Hello, I’m Gerald Ford. I’m President and you’re not.”
No one, repeat, no one who has attained the office of President is stupid. This President was smart enough to recognize that appealing to the right wing of Christianity with all its believers in the rapture could work all around. He’d get their votes. Their pastors would get the prestige of providing the votes without which he would not attain office. Nobody at the leadership level of either the current administration (Rove being an atheist, after all) or the churches cared about seeking the will of a still-speaking God. That’s more a United Church of Christ thing. But fortunately, our President is not likely to order the Air Force blow up Iran unless it is extremely profitable for the defense industry and the oil companies, uh-oh, it is. Maybe it’s been a great thing for the world that the Air Force has had a problem with the troops guarding the missiles playing video games on duty or putting nukes on planes without telling the pilots. Maybe it’s the real “duh” people who have been an incalculable blessing to us all.
posted May 26, 2011 at 9:55 pm
I like it very much, thank you