Bush’s diplomacy tended to the black and white: I get along with you, or I don’t; you’re with us, or you’re against us; you’re a terrorist, or you’re opposed to terrorists. This approach led—and, in general, leads—to disaster not because it’s moralistic, but because it so egregiously misapprehends the world and leaves us with so little leverage to affect it.
For instance, Obama will almost certainly open up talks with Syria as a means of isolating Iran and cutting off both countries’ links with Hezbollah. Bush always opposed any contact—and vetoed efforts by some of his top officials to go that route—because Syria supported terrorists. By this argument, had someone with this view been president during World War II, the United States wouldn’t have struck up an alliance with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany on the grounds that Stalin wasn’t much less evil than Hitler—and we would faced catastrophic defeat in our high moral dudgeon.
