A change in tone.

Obama did an interview with middle eastern news source on America's foreign policy in the region. I respect to this week's reading, you can see the stark differences with him and Bush. Obama's answers were respectful, informed and never fell back on empty statements about democracy and freedom.

If you look at Bush's interviews and press conferences in the mid east, they read like he's a Miss America contestant in the Q&A portion. It's sentences about freedom and democracy make for great sound bites, but actually contain any information. They do serve another purpose, however.

I don't know if anyone has read Dead Certain, a biography of Bush that came out about 18 months ago, but it talks about his style of agenda setting. Essentially, he restructures the nature of his argument so that there is no rebuttal to it. His stubbornness on Iraq, for example, was countered by his claim that no one can convince him that freedom isn't a good thing. Basically, he says his position is synonymous with freedom, and that if you disagree with him then you disagree with freedom. Why would anyone disagree with freedom? No one would, but now if you want to come at him, you're already on the defense, having to refute that claim before you can move on. It's the same thing they did with the "support our troops" rhetoric, where criticism has to begin with an explanation that you don't hate the troops.

Obama is changing the tenor of mid east foreign policy. He's not going to use empty statements to justify his positions, nor is he going to try and convince the region that our air strikes have the muslim people's best interests at heart. As he's demonstrated with his other policy decisions thus far, he's going to use his best judgement and convince us that he's right without using Bush style rhetoirc.