And there’s so much you could learn but you don’t want to know

There was some attention recently to a story told by Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran about John McCain's temper. Apparently during a 1987 trip to Nicaragua to meet with the Sandinista leadership McCain, according to Cochran:

"reached over and grabbed this guy by the shirt collar and had snatched him up like he was throwing him up out of the chair to tell him what he thought about him or whatever. I don't know what he was telling him but I thought, good grief, everybody around here has got guns and we were there on a diplomatic mission.

Now, this story has been referenced by pundits mainly to wax on the political importance (or lack thereof) of McCain's temper as an issue. What I haven't seen commented on is this story's relevance to the Obama-McCain argument over talking and negotiating with enemies. After all, the story takes place in Nicaragua while the Sandinista regime was in power. At that time, the Sandinistas were considered one of America's main enemies because of their alliance (although not a particularly close one) with the Soviet Union, their actual closeness with Castro and their support of guerrillas in El Salvador. It's hard to remember now, but at the time Central America was the "Middle East" of its day, with then UN Secretary Jeanne Kirkpatrick describing it as the "most important place in the world" for U.S. foreign policy. The Reagan administration and its friends spread many a story about how a growing Sandinista military or future Soviet military bases could prove to be a direct threat to the U.S. homeland. Here's how President Reagan described what a failure to confront the Sandinista regime could lead to:

We will have to confront the reality of a Soviet military beachhead inside our defense perimeters, about 500 miles from Mexico. A future President and Congress will then face nothing but bad choices, followed by worse choices. My friends in the House, for over 200 years the security of the United States has depended on the safety of unthreatened borders, north and south. Do we want to be the first elected leaders in U.S. history to put our borders at risk?

Yet, despite the seemingly grave threat posed by the Sandinista regime Senator McCain, accompanied by a number of other Republican Senators including Bob Dole, saw fit in 1987 to visit Nicaragua and speak to the leadership of the Sandinista regime. Of course McCain also strongly supported U.S. intervention in Central America, including leading a successful filibuster of an amendment by Senators Dodd and Leahy (aw, don't you love the ever-changing cast of characters) to cut aid to the Salvadoran regime. Still, I'd be interested for some Democratic surrogate to bring up this point next time they get a lecture on the naivety of meeting with ones' foes.