Exhibit A For "More And Better Democrats"

So Sarko flies over to D.C. from France and wows everyone with a speech according to this New York Times story, full of wonderful words and images that represent absolutely nothing that will address any of the urgent issues facing our countries and the rest of the world.

And as you might imagine, Republicans were positively orgiastic in their praise (and I could point out that, in terms of actual substance, I don’t see a heck of a lot separating Sarko from that stiff Jacques Chirac, but then again, there I go being a filthy, unkempt liberal blogger again).

(Also, I could go off over Dubya’s utterly delusional claim that Iraq is “a struggling democracy” and having no issue at all with Sarko going to Syria to talk peace while our own politicians who do so are demonized from here into next week, but I’ll save that for perhaps another day.)

And what does “the opposition party” to the Repugs have to say, in the person of U.S. House Rep Tom Lantos? Well, concerning the speech…

“President Sarkozy has hit a home run out of the ballpark,” said Representative Tom Lantos, the California Democrat who is chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. “I expect a spectacular renaissance in French-American relations.”

Mr. Lantos added that France was proven right in its refusal to back the war in Iraq.

“In view of everything we know now — the flawed intelligence, the miserable execution of the post-military phase — the French certainly were right,” Mr. Lantos said.

Uh, yeah Tom, your point is made. However, there are a couple of issues to be addressed, and one of them is noted here…

By September, 2002, Lantos had shown himself to be a supporter of the White House position on the war. On October 4, 2002, Mr. Lantos led a narrow majority of Democrats on the House International Relations Committee to a successful vote in support of the President's path toward war, seeking the approval of the United Nations, but allowing the President to strike out on his own if necessary. "The train is now on its way," said Mr. Lantos after his — and the President's — victory.[13] In later hearings on the war, Mr. Lantos continued his enthusiastic support. At one point he was confronted by witnesses who questioned the likelihood of enthusiastic Baghdadis welcoming the invading Americans; Mr. Lantos called this a kind of racism, to suggest the Iraqis might be so ungrateful.

Wow (and of course, the Wikipedia article states that Lantos has subsequently “distanced himself from the Bush Administration's Iraq policy”).

And the other issue, of course, is wondering what the hell this kind of message sends to our troops in Iraq; opposing the war after supporting it at first is one thing, but cheering on a leader of a country who refuses to send over any portion of its armed forces to assist us is something completely different.

But I guess Lantos felt that he had to leap at this opportunity to suck up to a European head of a country, seeing as how he acted like such an utter buffoon in front of Dutch lawmakers recently.

And as we know, Lantos, along with fellow Dem Rep Ike Skelton, utterly caved in on MoveOn.org during the “General Betray Us” fiasco, when, as I’ve said before, it’s likely that the Dems would not be enjoying their Congressional leadership without that group’s assistance.

I know his background and sense of history is otherwise admirable, but if Lantos is going to conduct himself in a matter so utterly oblivious to reality, then he should either join the Republican Party (where he would fit in seamlessly) or announce that he will not run for another term (maybe resigning altogether is something for him to consider as well).

Update: OK, I’ll give Lantos this one anyway, but what else can you expect when doing business with a totalitarian regime?.

Update 2 11/20/07: Please let this be so.