One of Barack Obama’s greatest talents is his ability to re-frame questions extemporaneously so that he can provide a solution to a problem he wishes existed, rather than the problem that actually does exist. His answer to Hezbollah’s mini-civil war in Lebanon two months ago was to call on Iran and Syria to reign in Hezbollah, as if those countries were bystanders whose help could be enlisted rather than the actual perpetrators of the crisis. Today, in noting Obama’s answer to a bilingual education question, Jonah Goldberg comments that “Obama has a great gift at sounding insightful when he insipidly changes the subject to something completely different and more helpful to his cause.”

And so it is again today with Obama’s response to the missile display staged by Iran this morning, which as Gordon pointed out below was intended as a demonstration of Iran’s retaliatory capabilities in response to an Israeli or American attack. The McCain campaign responded to the news by reiterating support for missile defense, which is the sensible thing to say when a terrorist theocracy makes a show of its ability to launch missiles at you and your allies.

Obama, though, had a different message — the same message on Iran that he delivers no matter the particulars of the situation:

Now is the time to work with our friends and allies, and to pursue direct and aggressive diplomacy with the Iranian regime backed by tougher unilateral and multilateral sanctions. It’s time to offer the Iranians a clear choice between increased costs for continuing their troubling behavior, and concrete incentives that would come if they change course.

And thus is the Iran confrontation re-defined as something in harmony with the aesthetic of Obama’s foreign policy. The premise of this alternate reality is that there has been scarcely any “work with our friends and allies” on Iran, virtually zero “aggressive diplomacy,” only tepid attempts at unilateral and multilateral sanctions, and no offering of incentives for changed behavior. Of course, all of these things have been the staples of U.S. and western policy going on six years — and every one of them has proven incapable of dissuading Iran from its nuclear objectives. That which has been tried but failed is simply re-cast as untried.

And then there is Obama’s only novel idea: that one-on-one presidential diplomacy is the secret missing ingredient to success with Iran. Yet it is impossible to find even the slightest shred of evidence that Iran continues to pursue its nuclear and missile programs only because the President of the United States refuses to engage personally, or send an emissary on his behalf, with the regime. This is not something the Iranians have ever requested, and it is doubtful that they would even agree to such engagement if it was proposed. Obama has never bothered to elaborate on why he believes that this linchpin of his Iran policy would work, and for good reason: there is no personalized message the President could deliver which would drive the regime off a course to which it has remained obstinately dedicated despite several rounds of Security Council sanctions, despite the likelihood of military attack, and despite many layers of financial sanctions and penalties imposed by the U.S. and other governments around the world.

There is something profoundly dangerous about a candidate for president who refuses to engage with foreign powers as they are. Opposite Iran, Obama offers a combination of the discredited and the improbable.