If I were a psychiatrist, what I’m about to tell you would cost me my license to practice. Howard Brush Dean is not completely, bit-flipped, bat-feces. Ok, ok, let me walk that controversial statement back a pace and qualify things. Compared to the unparalleled geniuses we have negotiating how Iran can legally nuke Israel; Howard is looking a bit smarter on the whole war and peace thing than he did as a Presidential Candidate back in 2004. He’s certainly a lot brighter than CNN on the subject.*

So Dr. Dean boldly dons the Ebola gear and wades into the malarial fever-swamp that is MSNBC and then has the unmitigated gall to agree with the token Conservative. You see Joe Scarborough was trying to play the clown in the dunking booth. He deliberately came up with a shtick that would make the Liberals do the agitated hornet dance. Here’s what Scarborough offered up as bait.

“I think [mc_name name=’Sen. John Kerry (D-MA)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’K000148′ ] and Barack Obama are far, far too eager for a deal with Iran, and could actually get a better deal if they walked away from the table and possibly came back later,” Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough began with Dean on Wednesday morning. “Why am I wrong, Howard?”

At that point the former governor made me laugh – and it wasn’t even unintentional on his part. He was genuinely witty. Not only that, he made a heck of a lot more sense than John F. Kerry does.

”The United States is negotiating from a much stronger position than we were four years ago,” Dean said, explaining that “these guys are desperate to get rid of the sanctions.” The former DNC chair said Iran’s negotiating tactics reminded him of a New York real estate person “com[ing] in at the closing and saying, ‘I’ll take another $10,000′ — at the closing!”

The New York Times helpfully describes what is causing the negotiations to fail. The United States is willing to drop economic sanctions against Iran if the Iranians ship their Uranium stocks to Russia to be converted into fuel rods compatible with nuclear reactors. This would make them a pain in the rear to weaponize and deploy in atomic bombs or nuclear missiles. When Howard Dean spoke of the Iranians demanding more at the last minute, this is what he was condignly peeved over. The NY Times tells us about the last-minute grab.

“The shipping out of Iran’s uranium stockpile was to be the key administration win in this agreement,” [mc_name name=’Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA)’ chamber=’house’ mcid=’R000487′ ], the California Republican who is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in an interview Monday. “It was presumed they were going to win on that point because they were giving in on every other point. “Now,” he added, “it looks like that rationale is being tossed out the window.”

Where Dr. Dean remains filled to the cheerful brim with fail is that he wants the old deal at all. This would have given Iran a one-year breakout time. Meaning that because fuel rods were a pain for bomb builders to work with, it would have taken the Iranians a year to start producing nuclear arms. He thinks this is a boffo idea. To me, negotiating with the guys who fund Hezbollah is akin to cutting a really good deal with the Unabomber so that he stops sending pipe bombs through the US Mail. So let’s not bring him back for a 2016 encore when we have charming people like Martin O’Malley and [mc_name name=’Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’W000817′ ] to run for the Dem nomination instead. But still, just for a day, Howard looked sane, rested and relevant. It’s too bad he looked that way in juxtaposition to the guys getting paid to make important decisions.

*-Their next philosophical discussion could involve the query of whether ursine mammals exhibit a pronounced tendency to defecate in areas of dense tree growth.