IBD:

The U.S. has just persuaded the most isolated tyranny on Earth to disable a plutonium plant and turn over nearly 19,000 pages of nuclear documents. Would Obama do better?

Barack Obama has done a lot of talking in his campaign about the merits of “tough diplomacy,” as he likes to put it, “the kind that the Bush administration has been unable and unwilling to use.”

In that vein, Obama has belittled Asia’s U.S.-led six-party talks between North Korea, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea, calling them an “ad hoc arrangement.”

As an alternative, “Obama is willing to meet with the leaders of all nations, friend and foe,” according to the foreign policy section of his campaign Web site. As Obama’s thinking goes, “if America is willing to come to the table, the world will be more willing to rally behind American leadership to deal with challenges like terrorism, and Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs.”

Similarly, Obama’s immediate predecessor as Democratic presidential standard bearer, Sen. John Kerry, this week remarked that “engaging our enemies can pay dividends.”

Kerry was referring to the Bush administration’s modest but significant diplomatic victory in persuading the communist government of North Korea to deliver records of its nuclear activities to China on Thursday. The development is a key move toward Pyongyang’s atomic disarmament.

Much is being made of the Kerry “compliment” by those outraged that the president will now reward North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il by easing some sanctions, and in 45 days remove the regime from America’s list of terrorist client states.

The president’s own former U.N. ambassador, the clear-minded, no-nonsense John Bolton, called it ” shameful” and said it signaled “the final collapse of Bush’s foreign policy.”

And House Intelligence Committee ranking Republican Pete Hoekstra of Michigan said the president’s move rewards a “brutal dictator for shallow gestures.” He suggested that the Bush Administration may have been fooled by Kim, not unlike the way he fooled Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

But the “concessions” granted to Pyongyang are largely symbolic in nature. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stresses that we have provided precious little aid or help in the economic sphere and that considerable sanctions remain in place.

And the president pointed out that “the two actions America is taking will have little impact on North Korea’s financial and diplomatic isolation. North Korea will remain one of the most heavily sanctioned nations in the world.”

As Bush put it, this is “a moment of opportunity for North Korea.”