While the rest of the world is enjoying the refreshing return of diplomacy as the preferred tool for U.S. foreign policy, partisan snipers back at the ranch are pouting for a return to the dangerous cowboyism of the past administration.

President Obama is naïve, they say, for not pointing a judgmental finger in the face of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin when they met two weeks ago. Those critics must have forgotten that it was the previous president who, like a charmed schoolgirl, said he looked into Putin's eyes and got a sense of his soul.

Too bad President George W. Bush didn't see the manipulative nature of the former KGB operative whose Stalinist tendencies are increasingly in evidence. Putin technically plays second fiddle to President Dmitry Medvedev. But he handpicked Medvedev, and Putin is believed to be preparing to reassume the presidency in the next election.

There was no naïveté by Obama in Russia. He neither idolized Putin or treated him with disdain. Obama was pragmatic, forging an agreement where one was possible, on nuclear proliferation, while stating clearly his different views on a U.S. missile shield in Europe and Russia's harsh treatment of Ukraine and Georgia.

A cowboy might have drawn his six-shooter, at least rhetorically, when two American journalists were jailed in March for entering secretive, repressive North Korea. Obama has instead tried to maintain perspective, working to secure the women's release, while keeping open the possibility of future nuclear talks with the wildly unpredictable Kim regime.

This practical approach to foreign policy was also seen in Obama's restraint in the aftermath of the disputed Iranian election.

The cowboys were screaming for Obama to encourage a rebellion even though the American people, already eager to quit Iraq, would be loath to support Iranian rebels with more than lip service. Obama instead criticized the way President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected, but left open the possibility of U.S. diplomats one day sitting down with Iran's to discuss its nuclear ambitions.

Obama's pragmatism was again on display when his administration symbolically assumed the mantle of broker for Middle East peace. In his groundbreaking speech in Cairo last month, Obama argued that the Palestinians should eschew terrorism and follow the nonviolent example of the U.S. civil-rights movement. But he also criticized Israel for continuing to expand settlements.

Obama must now let pragmatism take the reins with the very complex situation in Honduras. He, along with the United Nations, and the Organization of American States, quickly decried the June 28 ouster of democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. But there should be a limit to support for Zelaya, a power-hungry protégé of U.S.-hating Venezuela President Hugo Chavez.

In fact, Honduras illustrates the fallacy in touting democracy as the best gauge of a nation's freedom. Giving people the right to vote must be the goal, but the world has seen too many democratically chosen despots to say that alone is enough. Even Hitler was democratically elected.