This Gingrich ad is in the running for the worst attack ad I’ve seen so far … which is no small feat, given some of the ads we’ve seen so far.

While it takes pains to highlight the ways in which the abortion-loving, taxaholic Romney is a “Massachusetts moderate who ran away from Ronald Reagan,” the best bit is clearly at the end: “And just like John Kerry he speaks French, too.” What follows is a quick clip of Kerry saying, “Laissez les bon temps rouler” following by one of Romney saying, “Bonjour, je m’appelle Mitt Romney” (recorded as part of a promotional video for the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics).

It’s a nice bit of irony that Gingrich wrote his (not particularly good) doctoral dissertation on Belgian colonial rule in the Congo. I’m guessing it’s a point of pride for him that he doesn’t speak French, though.

So, if there’s one thing that Professor Gingrich wants you to remember, kids, it’s that learning a foreign language means you’re not a Real American and you can’t be President. We speak English here and everyone else everywhere else better learn to speak it too.

Update: A reader sent along a clip to a piece over at Foreign Policy that sums up Gingrich’s dissertation problem (referenced above) so nicely that it’s worth quoting:

So either Gingrich never actually read Pierre Wigny’s seminal 1955 work “Dix Anées historiques et perspectives d’avenir au Congo,” as he claims in a footnote on page 250, or the Belgian senate’s 1947 “Rapport de la Mission Sénatoriale au Congo Belge,”  as he claims on page 245, or his French is a hell of a lot better than Romney’s (and probably Kerry’s). J’accuse!