Hallelujah. A campaign promise has actually been fulfilled. (yawn.)

Barack Obama caused quite a stir on the campaign trail last year when he said he would sit down and talk with antagonistic world leaders, including Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, long known on these pages as Green Bean Almandine. Many Americans disagreed and said there would be nothing to gain from the leader of the free world sitting down as equals with a pipsqueak like Green Bean, or the North Korean nutjob, or the Venezuelan master of bombast.

Yet candidate Obama persevered and made it absolutely clear that he believed a "meaningful dialogue" with even the least likely leaders was better than the Bush Administration policy of treating them like petulant pisants.

This past week, after the farce of the recent Iranian elections, after the outbreak of huge, boisterous demonstrations that were quelled with murder, beatings and torture, Obama got his chance.

It went something like this:

Obama Day 1: Iran is none of our business.

Green Bean Day 1: Damn Straight.

Obama Day 2: You hurt my feelings. We should hold meaningful discussions on your motivations.

Green Bean Day 2: Shut your pile hole.

Obama Day 3: Meaningful silence.

Green Bean Day 3: That's what I'm talking about. Leader of the free world? Yeah, lead this baby!

Obama Day 4: What did you say?

Green Bean Day 4: You heard me.

Obama Day 5: Move our ships out of the Persian Gulf and institute the No Contact Protocol!

Green Bean Day 5: Chicken!

Obama Day 6: What?

Green Bean Day 6: You heard me!

Obama Day 7: Did not!

Green Bean Day 7: Did too!

Obama Day 8: Did Not!

Green Bean Day 8: Did too!

Listening to Fox News Sunday today, I was intrigued by a discussion on the discussion between the two equals, especially the discussion on between Fox News Senior Analyst Brit Hume, and national commentator Juan Williams.

Hume said that Obama "seemed not to recognize" that Green Bean has a brutal regime, and that those who participated in the post-election dissent are now being labelled criminals by the extremist Islamic clerics who run Iran. Knocks the hell out of Obama's street cred doesn't it?

Williams, who can be counted on to apologize for Obama no matter how tenuous his position, responded that anything is better than what George Bush did! I see.

Is anyone else wondering how long the Obama administration apologists are going to continue to blame George Bush for everything? The Big O has been in office for going on six months now and the Iranian elections did not occur on the Bush watch.

So let's all stand up and be big boys from here on out and take responsibility for our own actions, shall we? Oh, right, socialists don't fix problems, they fix the blame, as long as it is not fixed on them.

Anyway, I must have missed the last few exchanges between Obama and Green Bean because Hume said that Obama, after being out of step all week long, toughened his position at the end of the week. Maybe I zoned out from the tediousness of it all, but I don't recall hearing anything that would make me jump up and yell YES!

For that matter, I didn't hear anything that would even cause me to arch an eyebrow.

If this is what is going to pass as meaningful dialogue between world leaders for the next 3.5 years, we can expect to be hit on numerous fronts, by every two-bit punk who has delusions of world domination. The reason that the United States is a world leader is because myriad generations of immigrants, who came to America to escape repression, understood that you have to fight fire with fire.

We apparently are now fighting fire by blowing on it. I don't know about you, but I don't think that approach will work, and I plan on preparing for the repercussions.