As an ayatollah, all decisions are made after consulting the texts for guidance, and that takes a long time. He is more of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court than an executive, ensuring that decisions conform to established teaching and norms.

Rice actually has relevant experience for dealing with the Shi’ia ayatollahs because the hierarchy has a lot in common with a university and the power centers tend to be hawzas, like Najaf and Qom rather than capital cities.

The failure to understand the structure of the Iranian government and the power centers really makes any type of negotiations nearly impossible. Westerners are thinking in the wrong type of politics. Jesuit lawyers would be better choices to negotiate with Iran than diplomats. If something is “forbidden” there is no way of making it “acceptable”.

About half the time the “carrots” offered by the West are “forbidden” and have no value. Iranian leaders have to live their religion, not just talk about it.

All anyone can expect is the mess we have.

I mention this not to quarrel with Barack Obama’s stated willingness to meet with our adversaries; it isn’t inconsistent because he has said much the same thing. Rather, the point is that the Bush administration’s diplomacy has been unproductive up and down the diplomatic ladder for reasons that are directly traceable to the Executive office. So little effort, so lately expended, has been put by the Bush/Cheney administration into pre-meeting negotiations using skilled professional diplomats that Condoleeza Rice’s public statements amount to nothing more than theater. Worse, they only further poison the well of misunderstanding.

May god or Krishna or whatever save this Republic long enough that we reach January 20, 2009.

Ha! Yeah, right….Pinochio’s got nothing on these folks in office.