Matthew Yglesias is convinced ("The Accidental Foreign Policy") that when Barack Obama offered to meet with foreign despots "without precondition" in a debate last summer, this was more than an embarrassing gaffe (though indeed, it may have been a gaffe). Witting or no, the fact that Obama sticks to his guns on this point is no footnote; in staking out this ground, Obama, writes Yglesias, managed to shake his campaign out of "the bland competence-and-execution argument of mainstream [Democratic] party thinking."

For the better part of a generation, top Democratic politicians have followed, with astonishing uniformity, the same set of unwritten rules in their approach to foreign affairs: match GOP "toughness"; tack to the right on major foreign-policy principles; and, above all, avoid taking positions that could be criticized as weak. So at the YouTube debate on July 23, 2007, when Obama was asked whether he would be willing to meet "without precondition ... with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea," the right answer, conventionally speaking, was a qualified "no." But Obama answered in the affirmative. Initially, even sympathetic observers like The Nation's David Corn called this statement a "flub" at best. Hillary Clinton, the quintessence of Democratic establishment thinking, had answered that she would use "high-level presidential envoys to test the waters, to feel the way," before holding direct meetings with heads of state.

Few observers believed that Obama genuinely intended to break new ground with his response--his campaign had never articulated any such policy before, and seemed ill-prepared to defend it on the spot. The Clinton campaign dutifully pressed the attack the next day, calling Obama's statement "irresponsible and frankly naive." But then a funny thing happened. Obama's team did not try to qualify (or, in political parlance, "clarify") his remark, and no one said he misspoke. Instead, the campaign fought back, with memos to reporters and with a speech by the candidate himself, aimed squarely at the sort of "conventional wisdom" that had, in the words of his then-foreign-policy adviser, Samantha Power, "led us into the worst strategic blunder in the history of U.S. foreign policy."

It was only mid-summer, ages before the Iowa caucuses in campaign time, so it was a good moment to experiment. And it worked: polling suggested that Americans were largely on board with Obama's position. Soon, on the stump, he was regularly referring to his willingness to meet with foreign leaders, unlike other top presidential candidates.

Whether or not a candidate would entertain a different style of diplomacy, it was always this last point -- American public opinion -- that kept Democrats from exploring foreign policy approaches that the public would, immediately (it was presumed), ferret out as weak-kneed appeasement. But on the contrary, by asking questions other Democrats dared not ask, Obama has found "wellsprings of support," notes Yglesias.

... the crux of his approach is a certain fearlessness in asking questions, a refusal to dismiss any option as simply taboo. Why not talk to the leaders of Iran and Syria? If we want other countries to follow the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, why shouldn't we be willing to live up to our own treaty commitments? If al-Qaeda is primarily in central Asia, how come America's military and intelligence resources aren't?

There is a delicate, perhaps even ineffable, dance that good leaders must navigate: they must listen to consituents, but they must also know when (and how) to pull constituents along toward unpopular positions. At least among Democrats, Obama seems to be leading successfully in a new direction. That much change, at least, I can believe in.