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President Obama is lobbying hard for a full-fledged nuclear deal with Iran. He hopes to raise the U.S. flag at an embassy in Cuba before he leaves office. He traveled to Myanmar last fall as he moves to normalize relations.

Obama's tenure has been marked by this outreach to pariah states that previous U.S. presidents, Republican and Democrat alike, isolated for decades. It's an approach that springs from his belief that engagement is more likely to encourage good behavior than punitive measures.

It's also a notion still being tested. All these moves are playing out and there's no clear-cut success yet. So far, the president has probably earned at least as much criticism as praise.

But Obama argues that the U.S. is strong enough to take chances and see if these countries are open to his initiatives. He likes to point to instances where countries have simply hunkered down and blamed the U.S. when facing sanctions, embargoes and isolation.

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Transcript: President Obama's Full NPR Interview On Iran Nuclear Deal

"The country that is most isolated in the world is North Korea," Obama said in an interview with NPR's Steve Inskeep. "I think it would be hard to argue that, by virtue of the fact that they can't feed their people, and that they are almost entirely cut off from global trade, that that somehow lessened their capacity for mischief and trouble-making."

The Two-Way

Obama: 'Misjudgment' To Make Iran Deal Contingent On Recognizing Israel

Still, many Republicans say the president has offered too many concessions, offering economic relief to Iran, Cuba and Myanmar without insisting on fundamental, irreversible change. Iran could cheat on a nuclear deal. The Castros remain entrenched in Cuba. The former generals in Myanmar, also known as Burma, may have taken off their uniforms, but they still call the shots.

Making His Case For An Iran Deal

The president acknowledges there's no guarantee these countries will respond in the way he hopes. But in making his case for a nuclear deal with Iran, Obama says the U.S. will be better positioned regardless of the path Iran chooses.

"This is a good deal if you think Iran's open to change; it's also a good deal if you think that Iran is implacably opposed to the United States and the West and our values," Obama said in the NPR interview.

"Now, ideally, we would see a situation in which Iran, seeing sanctions reduced, would start focusing on its economy, on training its people, on reentering the world community, to lessening its provocative activities in the region," the president added.

He went on to say, "But the key point I want to make is, the deal is not dependent on anticipating those changes. If they don't change at all, we're still better off having the deal."

The focus will be reaching a final agreement by the end of June. But the negotiations are also seen as a development that could chip away at decades of distrust on other fronts. The U.S. and Iran, for example, share common goals that include defeating the self-declared Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and suppressing the Taliban in Afghanistan.

A New Approach In Cuba

In Obama's view, developing a dialogue can give the U.S. a better feel and understanding of long-standing rivals as opposed to simply trading recriminations from afar.

This was part of his thinking with Cuba, where the president says the U.S. embargo, dating back more than a half-century, has failed and that a new approach is needed.

"Do we have the ability to change the relationship with the United States and Cuba in such a way that it benefits the Cuban people over the long term?" the president told NPR.

Obama concluded, "I don't expect immediate transformation of the Cuban-American relationship overnight, but I do see the possibility — a great hunger within Cuba to begin a change — a process that ultimately, I think, can lead to more freedom and more opportunity."

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This year, the U.S. and Japan mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, a bitter time that left deep wounds. In the 1980s, Japan and U.S. were at times economic adversaries, caught up in bilateral trade disputes.

Today, most Americans say they're pleased with the state of U.S.-Japan relations. In a new survey by the Pew Research Center, more than 8 in 10 Americans said they prefer the two nations remain close or get closer. Three-quarters of Japanese surveyed around the same time — in February of this year — say they trust the United States.

Another point of agreement: The rise of China gives both Americans and Japanese some anxiety. Pew surveyed both Americans and Japanese citizens for its latest research and found only 30 percent of Americans and 7 percent of Japanese say they trust China. Sixty percent of Americans said that China's rise as a military and economic power only makes the U.S.-Japanese alliance more important.

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Responses when Japanese were asked, "Which of these characteristics do you associate with American people?" Pew Research Center hide caption

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Responses when Japanese were asked, "Which of these characteristics do you associate with American people?"

Pew Research Center

Despite American doubts about China as a trading partner, those surveyed indicated that more young Americans think it's important to have strong economic ties with China than to have them with Japan.

Still, the study authors note, "The future of U.S.-Japan relations will, in large part, be a product of bilateral economic interaction."

Japan is currently the United States' fourth-largest trading partner. And Tokyo and Washington are in the process of negotiating deeper trade and investment bonds between the two nations, an effort that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will be trying to shore up when he visits Washington later this month.

What We Think Of Each Other

The Pew study contains all sorts of interesting data about how much the countries know about each other.

For example, only about 10 percent of American surveyed said they know anything about tensions over "comfort women" — women from China and Korea and other Asian countries forced to provide sex to Japanese army soldiers during World War II. This issue still receives extensive coverage from where I write this post, in South Korea.

There's also the matter of what characteristics Americans associate with Japanese, and vice versa. The chart here shows you the results, which seem to align with stereotypes — Americans see the the Japanese as honest and hardworking, while Japanese overwhelmingly find Americans to be "inventive," but not particularly hardworking.

Only 19 percent of Americans associate the word "selfish" with the Japanese, while about half the Japanese surveyed see Americans as "aggressive" and "selfish."

And when it came time for free association in the survey, Americans overwhelmingly said they think of "food" or "sushi" when they think of Japan.

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Pew

Rand Paul is not like other potential presidential candidates.

The Kentucky senator, who is expected to announce his candidacy for the White House Tuesday morning, doesn't fit neatly into the molds of either party.

Socially liberal on issues of crime and punishment — especially when it comes to drug sentencing — against a federal ban on same-sex marriage, and no foreign policy hawk, he's not your prototypical Republican.

A fiscal conservative, but anti-abortion rights, he's certainly no Democrat, either.

"It's time for a new way, a new set of ideas and a new leader," Paul says in a web video, with a heavy metal soundtrack, previewing his soon-to-be presidential campaign.

Paul fits more with Libertarians. And, though he is the scion of the last carrier of the torch of "liberty," he's also not quite his father's Libertarian.

Paul's father, the former congressman Ron, ran for president three times before retiring. The elder Paul, 79, was always regarded as something of a gadfly, an outspoken fresh voice in the Republican primary with an ironic following of young Libertarians.

Though Paul did not win a single state in 2008 or 2012, when measured by Election Day voting percentage, he routinely finished in the top three. In fact, he finished a solid second behind Romney in the critical early state of New Hampshire.

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Supporters of Sen. Rand Paul's cheer as he speaks during CPAC. Carolyn Kaster/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Carolyn Kaster/AP

Supporters of Sen. Rand Paul's cheer as he speaks during CPAC.

Carolyn Kaster/AP

But his band of young, engaged and determined Paul-ites proved one thing — they could organize. Ron Paul not only won straw poll after straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference and elsewhere, he also won the most delegates in several states, including Iowa. Though Paul finished third in vote total in the Hawkeye State, his campaign engineered what amounted to a takeover of the state Republican Party apparatus.

"He has a number of assets," said Stu Rothenberg, founder of the Rothenberg Political Report. "He has terrific fundraising potential. He has an army of supporters who will run into a burning building to vote for him."

Rand Paul has tried to use those supporters to help build on his father's foundation, reaching out to minority voters with an emphasis on criminal justice reform and to young audiences — like one in New Hampshire last year — with an appeal based on privacy and civil liberties.

"How many people here have a cellphone?" Paul asked. "How many people think it's none of the government's damn business what you do on your cell phone?"

That brought rousing applause.

"If I had to fill a large lecture room at my campus, I would bet a lot that Rand Paul could fill that room with young Libertarian-minded conservatives," said Dante Scala, a political scientist at the University of New Hampshire. "Of that I have little doubt."

Though Rand Paul can fill a room with young Libertarians in similar ways that his father could, he isn't a carbon copy of his dad. Paul has adjusted some of his policies to slightly more fit the mainstream of the GOP.

Paul has emphasized where he agrees with evangelical Christians on gay marriage, telling a group of pastors last month that the First Amendment says keep government out of religion, not religion out of government. And, in moves that show he understands the GOP has returned to its hawkish roots since the rise of the Islamic State militant group, he has changed his tune on Defense spending, proposing $190 billion more for the Pentagon, and the second day of his presidential rollout finds him in South Carolina — in front of the aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Yorktown.

Those moves toward the mainstream of the party may lose Paul some die-hard Libertarians, but, says David Boaz of the Cato Institute, most Libertarians are thrilled.

"I think Rand Paul is the most Libertarian major presidential candidate that I can remember seeing," said Boaz, who's new book is called, "The Libertarian Mind," "so it tells you that there is a constituency that wants this more Libertarian approach."

Boaz sees Paul's adjustments as necessary and practical.

"Rand Paul is trying to find a balance that reflects his own views and appeals to a plurality and eventually the majority of the party," Boaz said. "To the extent that there is that constituency — skeptical of foreign intervention, skeptical of the surveillance state — he has that market in the Republican Party all to himself. Is it a big enough market? Well, that's what he's about to find out."

Paul's anti-establishmentarian campaign slogan for 2016 will be, "Defeat the Washington Machine; Unleash the American Dream."

That little rhyme invokes the crusading Paul raging against the "security state" on the floor of the U.S. Senate in an old-fashioned, 13-hour filibuster two years ago. But if the goal for Rand Paul in 2016 is to emerge as the anti-establishment alternative to, say, Jeb Bush, Paul has to become more than just the Libertarian candidate, Scala said.

"He has to find a way to be more appealing to the mainstream of New Hampshire Republicans while keeping his appeal to his core vote, which I would describe right now as people who voted for his dad three years ago," Scala said. "That's the trick for Rand Paul."

Paul, like his father's online "Money Bombs," will likely be able to raise enough money to stick around for quite some time in the GOP primary. Analysts like Rothenberg are skeptical he will be able to pull off the improbable and become the Republican nominee, but Rothenberg wonders if Paul is laying the groundwork for a sea change within the party.

"He may be starting a process that down the road will change the Republican Party, will start to bring in some new kind of faces into the Republican Party," Rothenberg said. "And I wouldn't be surprised if in six or 10 years, this is a more Libertarian party."

2016 Presidential Race

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Traditionally, the liquified foods marathoners choke down in the middle of a race have been limited to some pretty basic flavors: lemon-lime gel, vanilla goo, chocolate mystery substance.

No more! Clif has introduced pizza-flavored energy paste.

We tried it while competing together in an ultramarathon this weekend (this entire sentence is a lie).

Ian: It's like an IV bag for someone suffering from too much happiness.

Eva: If my wisdom teeth grow back and I have to get them removed again, I won't have to take a break from pizza this time.

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Robert looks before he tastes. NPR hide caption

itoggle caption NPR

Robert looks before he tastes.

NPR

Robert: Finally, a cure for the Passover pizza craving I suffer from every year!

To be fair, this stuff is designed for endurance athletes. See, it's specially formulated to punish people who won't stop talking about their marathon.

Eva: This'll be great for refueling during my couch triathlon!

Ann: I'm not a marathoner, but I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to induce vomiting while running.

This is food. NPR hide caption

itoggle caption NPR

Ian: Yes, Liquid Pizza. Because you should trust the choices of people who choose to run ultramarathons.

The ingredients listed include Organic Carrot Puree, Organic Quinoa, and Organic Sunflower Seed Butter, just like real pizza.

Eva: This is the gel they use for ultrasounds if you're pregnant with a pizza.

Ian: How could something that combines my love of pizza with my love of drinking be so terrible?

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Robert tries another approach. NPR hide caption

itoggle caption NPR

Robert tries another approach.

NPR

Robert: I usually have to drink a whole lot more to bring pizza back looking like this.

[The verdict: At their best, energy gels are not good. This is far from the best.]

Sandwich Monday is a satirical feature from the humorists at Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me!

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