The front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Obama, increasingly is arranging his foreign policy around negotiating with enemies. In Mr. Obama’s cartoonish portrayal, President Bush never talks to the bad guys, a stance the Illinois senator vows to reverse. His likely Republican rival, Senator McCain, calls this “dangerously naïve.”

So, to talk or not to talk? And what is the Bush administration’s policy on talking with “axis of evil” members, anyway?

On Friday, the U.N. Security Council is expected to impose a third round of mild sanctions on Iran for its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment, a small but hard-fought victory for the Bush administration’s brand of multilateralism, which is real, despite the cartoonish portrayals, as are direct American negotiations with Iran.

A former American ambassador to Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, helped establish the current policy, which allowed him and his successor, Ryan Crocker, to speak with Iranian officials about security-related issues in Iraq. This policy may have contributed to the Shiite militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr’s decision last week to extend for six months his moratorium on attacks against American and Iraqi troops.

On the nuclear file, however, America will negotiate with Iran only once it suspends its enrichment program. “We could do it. It could happen. Secretary Rice said she would participate in it herself — post-suspension,” Mr. Khalilzad, who now serves as America’s ambassador to the United Nations, told me Friday.

For Mr. Obama, however, dangling high-end diplomatic meetings as an incentive for a change in behavior is bad policy rooted in American hubris. “If we think that meeting with the president is a privilege that has to be earned, I think that reinforces the sense that we stand above the rest of the world at this point in time,” he said during the CNN/Univision debate with Senator Clinton on Thursday.

His aversion to American exceptionalism aside, Mr. Obama’s position evolved out of a primary debate last July, when he casually said he would talk, without preconditions, with the leaders of Iran and Syria. Mrs. Clinton immediately seized on the statement as a gaffe by an inexperienced politician, but Mr. Obama declined to correct his course. He instead doubled down and in last week’s debate said he favored a sit-down with Raul Castro, selected yesterday in Havana as his brother Fidel’s successor, before a single political prisoner is let out of Cuba’s gulags.

Because of his background, Mr. Obama is likely to increase goodwill toward America around the world. The leaders of Cuba, Syria, Iran, and North Korea are likely to welcome him too, which may open up new diplomatic opportunities. But what will he tell them? So far, he has declined to articulate a coherent negotiation policy beyond the need to negotiate.

For tutoring, he may turn to President Clinton’s first secretary of state, Warren Christopher, whose multiple trips to Damascus during the reign of Hafez al-Assad in the mid-1990s famously led to little of note beyond a great humiliation to America’s diplomacy. Or Mr. Obama may want to talk to the European Union’s foreign policy point man, Javier Solana, who has negotiated endlessly with the Iranian mullahs in an effort to convince them to suspend their enrichment. Or he could secretly turn to his nemeses at the current White House. Try Christopher Hill, whose negotiations with the North Koreans were successful on all fronts — except for Pyongyang’s failure to deliver its end of the bargain, as in dismantling its nuclear program.

I am no fan of the Cuban embargo, but removing it now — or announcing a presidential trip to meet with Raul Castro — would indicate that America views this familial transfer of power as real change, rather than what it is: a maneuver meant to leave the brutal Castro legacy intact.

“Meet, talk, and hope may be a sound approach in a state legislature, but it is dangerously naïve in international diplomacy where the oppressed look to America for hope and adversaries wish us ill,” Mr. McCain said last week in a statement reacting to Mr. Obama’s pledge to talk with Raul Castro.

A policy barring any meetings with dictators — even one as ironclad as Mr. Bush’s critics imagine — is no worse than a hope that presidential power and personal charm alone can solve problems with the simple scheduling of a face-to-face meeting. Targeted talks with the bad guys may help, but so can a ban on negotiations. Unlike presidential campaigns, reality is complex, which is why Mr. Bush talks with enemies when he deems necessary, and also why, if elected, Mr. Obama will at times probably refrain from talking.

bavni@nysun.com