Obama on Cotton’s Iran Letter: Democrats Would Never Have Tried To ‘Undermine’ Bush

BARACK OBAMA: "I do worry that some traditional boundaries in how we think about foreign policy have been crossed. I felt the letter that was sent to the supreme leader was inappropriate. I think that you will recall there were some deep disagreements with President Bush about the Iraq war, but the notion that you would have had a whole bunch of Democrats sending letters to leaders in the region or to European leaders who were not part of the coalition, trying to undermine the president’s policies I think is troubling. The bottom line is that we’re going to have serious debates, serious disagreements, and I welcome those because that’s how our democracy is supposed to work. And in today’s international environment, whatever arguments we have here, other people are hearing and reading about it. It’s not a secret that the Republicans may feel more affinity with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s views of the Iran issue than they do with mine. But keeping that within some formal boundaries, so that the executive branch, when it goes overseas, when it’s communicating with foreign leaders, is understood to be speaking on behalf of the United States of America, not a divided United States of America, making sure that whether that president is a Democrat or a Republican that once the debates have been had here, that he or she is the spokesperson on behalf of U.S. foreign policy. And that’s clear to every leader around the world. That’s important because without that, what you start getting is multiple foreign policies, confusion among foreign powers as to who speaks for who, and that ends up being a very dangerous circumstances that could be exploited by our enemies and could deeply disturb our friends."