As Obama has populated his administration with Clinton apparatchiks and Republicans, progressive principles seem to take a back seat to accomodation. An important difference that lead me to support Obama over Clinton during the election campaign was his willingness to sit down with our adversaries and those with whom we had policy differences and talk with them. Yet, George Freedman, in a marketing email from Stratfor notes that Joe Biden's speech in Munich suggests that Obama maintains the preconditions that Bush, Clinton and McCain all said were so important during the campaign.
Consider Iran. The Obama administration’s position, as staked out by Biden, is that the United States is prepared to speak directly to Iran provided that the Iranians do two things.
First, Tehran must end its nuclear weapons program. Second, Tehran must stop supporting terrorists, by which Biden meant Hamas and Hezbollah. Once the Iranians do that, the Americans will talk to them. The Bush administration was equally prepared to talk to Iran given those preconditions. The Iranians make the point that such concessions come after talks, not before, and that the United States must change its attitude toward Iran before there can be talks, something Iranian Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani emphasized after the meeting. Apart from the emphasis on a willingness to talk, the terms Biden laid out for such talks are identical to the terms under the Bush administration.