Further to this post, here's another commentator emphasizing the importance of the US president meeting with democratic dissidents. Jackson Diehl writes:
[T]he attention of the American president is precious to dissidents. It gains them enormous attention in their own countries and injects their liberal ideas into arenas from which they are usually excluded.
Though critical of George Bush's record, measured against the promise of his second inaugural address, Diehl thinks his practice of meeting dissidents ought to continue with Obama's presidency.