Guest Danielle Pletka from the American Enterprise Institute gave a history lesson to Sally Kohn the liberal host on CNN’s Crossfire Monday. Kohn called the GOP hypocrites for beating up Obama about Ukraine but not doing the same with Bush when Putin invaded Georgia. Pletka corrected Kohn reminding her that Senators McCain and Graham both did in fact criticize Bush for his response to Georgia. ​

Kohn followed up by saying there used to be a gentleman's agreement that politics ended at the water's edge. Wrong again, corrected Pletka.

Kohn: Republicans are practically cheering for Vladimir Putin today. He's given them a new excuse to bash President Obama. Republicans are out in droves suggesting that if the president weren't such a weak leader, Putin wouldn't be threatening the Ukraine. Did the same Republicans call George W. Bush weak when Putin invaded Georgia in 2008? No. 

(...)There's an Old Russian proverb, to spite my mom I’ll freeze my ears off. Danielle, aren't Republicans systematically undermining the President trying to spite the President, but in effect hurting America’s standing in the world?

Pletka: First of all, I think polling shows us that the President has done more to hurt our standing in the world than the Republicans at this point. But that's immaterial. First of all, let's get a little bit of history straight. John McCain, who you guys have been showing on endless loop criticizing the president on Ukraine, ripped George Bush's head off on the issue of Georgia, so did Lindsey Graham, who has also been on your screen mercilessly and without a lot of attitude from the Republican White House. So no labeling them hypocrites. They're people of principle. And I was in the same place, I agree wholeheartedly. Bush made a pathetic showing in Georgia; I think it was one of the things that encouraged Putin to believe that with an even weaker President he could go further.

Kohn: Well, the difference here is that once upon a time we have this sort of gentleman's and gentlewoman's agreement that our politics ended at the water's edge. Instead of getting behind the President and together as a country uniting to deal with this crisis, Republicans are out there undermining the President's leadership in the world.

Pletka: It's absolutely not true. First of all, it never stopped at the water's edge, if you recall after the first world war we didn't join the League of Nations, I think that was probably a moment in the last century before you were born but certainly when politics didn't stop at the water's edge. It never stopped at the water's edge. This is about national interests and about the security of the world. What we want to ensure is that Putin doesn't view the Crimea as Hitler viewed the Sudetenland that we don't have to engage later on. 

Pletka could have used more recent examples, like in 2004 when the  late Rep. John Murtha, D-PA, in a news conference with Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, said the problems in Iraq are due to a "lack of planning" by Pentagon chiefs and "the direction has got be changed or it is unwinnable."

Another example is from 2007, when Harry Reid said:

"I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense and — you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows — (know) this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday"

Certainly politics didn't end at the shore when in May of 1983 when Ted Kennedy sent an emissary to the Kremlin with a letter urging the Soviets to out-negotiate President Reagan:

The thrust of the letter is that Reagan had to be stopped, meaning his alleged aggressive defense policies, which then ranged from the Pershing IIs to the MX to SDI, and even his re-election bid, needed to be stopped. It was Ronald Reagan who was the hindrance to peace. That view of Reagan is consistent with things that Kennedy said and wrote at the time, including articles in sources like Rolling Stone (March 1984) and in a speeches like his March 24, 1983 remarks on the Senate floor the day after Reagan’s SDI speech, which he lambasted as “misleading Red-Scare tactics and reckless Star Wars schemes."

(...) So, there was a plan, or at least a suggested plan, to hook up Andropov and other senior apparatchiks with the American media, where they could better present their message and make their case. Specifically, the names of Walter Cronkite and Barbara Walters are mentioned in the document. Also, Kennedy himself would travel to Moscow to meet with the dictator.