Mr. Macron Goes To Washington

So this Frenchman walks into a joint session of a Republican-majority Congress and starts talking . . .

That's the joke.

But there's nothing funny about the concerns French President Emmanuel Macron voiced in his speech before Congress this past Wednesday.  After some laudatory remarks about the special relationship between France and the United States and the long alliance between the two countries - longer than our alliance with the British, which didn't even take root until the 1870s - Macron stressed the importance of an interdependent relationship between the U.S. and its European allies, urging the United States to avoid a trade war, rejoin the Paris climate agreement, make the transition to a carbon-neutral economy, understand the value of rules and regulations in economics (Macron is a trained economist), and, most important at this particular moment, stay in the Iran deal.  He also vowed that Iran would never get a nuclear weapon.  

Macron's speech got some applause from Republicans, especially his remarks on trade.  But when he touched on all of the other major points, he might as well have been reading a chapter from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," for all of the good that it did to persuade the GOP majority.  Indeed, when he stressed the importance of regulating economies and climate science, neither House Speaker Paul Ryan nor Vice President Mike Pence (who was there as the presiding office of the Senate), sitting behind the French leader,  bothered to acknowledge those comments.

Macron has charmed and flattered Donald Trump to try to reason with him on this state visit, in which the two men have forged an unlikely and peculiar friendship, though their only commonalities are never having held elective office before and marrying women not of their own respective generations.  It got Macron a state dinner.  But he still can't get Trump to admit that the Paris Agreement is a good idea (he didn't try on this trip), trade remains a point of relative disagreement, and it looks more and more like the Iran deal - the last remaining pillar of Barack Obama's "legacy" - is on borrowed time. Oh yeah, those of you still angry with Debbie Wasserman Schultz for promoting Hillary Clinton and thus giving us Donald  Trump and thus threatening the Iran deal, bear in mind that Wasserman Schultz, along with several other Democrats, were skeptical about the deal.  

It is just at sort of cluelessness and duplicity among the Democratic establishment that let Trump get elected President and why Democratic leaders so richly deserve not being invited to the Macron state dinner.

And if Macron wants to change Trump's mind about the Iran deal . . . maybe he can give him a ten-page pamphlet that explains the benefits of the deal in monosyllabic words . . . maybe one that features Babar!                

Yeah, I tick off everyone . . .