Some people are still going on about President Barack Obama’s handshake with President Hugo Chávez as if it were an omen of a burgeoning alliance with Lucifer. Of course, it's just the usual GOP talking point about Democrats being weak on defense. Traitors at worst, naive at best, but whichever it is, not fit to be leader of the country. Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, Senator Judd Gregg and David Gergen started the noise over the weekend, and it’s been going on ever since. Indiana Republican Rep. Mike Pence muttered about the "deeply offensive images" of the handshake and caught some well-deserved pushback from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she was up on the Hill this week.

Yes, a return to murderous gunboat "diplomacy" would be so much better than a handshake and a smile and a vow to "reset" decades of terrible policy in Latin America. Larry Kudlow, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and a whole parade of other talking heads act as if shaking hands with the Venezuelan leader is the worst thing a U.S. President ever did in Latin America. Way worse than selling missiles to the Ayatollah Khomeini and using the money to help terrorists blow up rural clinics in Nicaragua, for example.

Despite the hypocrisy, this particular talking point doesn’t quite yet seem to have run out of steam.

Otto Reich – who ran a government propaganda campaign out of the Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean during the Reagan administration, served as Ambassador to Venezuela from 1986 to 1989 (during which time he helped the terrorist Orlando Bosch to get out of the country), and served as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs under George W. Bush – was interviewedon The Takeaway Wednesday by John Hockenberry.

John Hockenberry: Do you find the images of Barack Obama sort of chumming it up there in a couple of moments during the Summit of the Americas offensive?

Otto Reich: Well, they send the wrong signals, and I think that for such a smart person, I think President Obama just made some comments that indicate he doesn't quite understand the importance of symbolism in international relations. The chummy-ness, to continue using the term, sent a signal that was very confusing to our friends and our adversaries in Latin America. Hugo Chávez is the least popular leader according to a hemisphere-wide poll that was released before the Summit, because people know that he's undermining democracy in Venezuela, that he's supporting, has supported, terrorists next door in Colombia, and that he has tried to rally the hemisphere against the United States. For the President to go down and pretend that those things have never happened is quite confusing to those leaders who have tried to be friends with the United States, to say the least.