Democrats can do this!

Now here's a chance for Democrats to stand up and for god's sake take a position! It's an opportunity to aggressively promote an honorable idea and demand action that could save lives, restore some dignity to our image abroad, and couldn't possibly — at least so far as I can guess — hurt anyone.

Just talk to the guy, Mr. President!

Reporting from Tehran, Karl Vick and Dafna Linzer wrote in today's Washington Post that

Iran has followed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent letter to President Bush with explicit requests for direct talks on its nuclear program, according to U.S. officials, Iranian analysts and foreign diplomats.

The eagerness for talks demonstrates a profound change in Iran's political orthodoxy, emphatically erasing a taboo against contact with Washington that has both defined and confined Tehran's public foreign policy for more than a quarter-century, they said.
Link

Even before this latest communication from Mahmoud, Mid-East experts around the country were concluding that Mahmoud's long letter to Bush a couple of weeks ago should be taken as an opening for dialogue. Matt Stannard, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, reported that

[S]everal experts said, the United States should not simply ignore Ahmadinejad's overture. Even a similarly vague, philosophical response might open the door for further negotiations, first over Iraq, then over nuclear issues, they said. Link

As I said before, it's clear what any respectable U.S. President — let alone the Jesus so often invoked in Mahmoud's letter — would do.

C'mon, Big Guy! What's to lose?