Covering the visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to New York makes good copy, and the media has tended to emphasize his more colorful and objectionable comments. When Ahmadinejad questions the Jewish claim to Israel, he gets plenty of headlines, and deservedly so. As president of Iran, his words matter and he is accountable for them.
But when he puts forward what might be constructive offers on the nuclear negotiations or ending the violence in Syria, he is often ignored or dismissed as irrelevant, a lame duck, a liar or on the losing end of a power struggle with Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.