The ill-fated Gale Boetticher recites Walt Whitman to Walter White in their high-tech meth lab for the cartel in Breaking Bad.

OK, yes, I've been watching too much Breaking Bad! (And yes, all bad things must come to an end, the last episodes start August 11).

But recalling the former Stanford University professor Amb. Michael McFaul would be a great idea right now, if President Obama can't see his way clear to immediately announcing that he will not attend the summit with Putin and the G20 meeting in St. Petersburg in September.

I believe Obama shouldn't go, not only because of Snowden's defection but because of everything else, from the expulsion of USAID, to the crackdown on Russian NGOs as "foreign agents" if they receive grants from abroad and engage in ill-defined "political activity," to the trials of Navalny and the Bolotnaya 6 and Pussy Riot and LGBT persecution, to the vast corruption of the Sochi Olympics (which Obama should come nowhere near, either — there is the dignity of office, and it should not be compromised) — and of course to the spy wars, and the failure of the FSB to tell us what they knew about the Tsarnaevs, who blew up the Boston Marathon. There really is LOTS of nastiness from Russia these days, they must be taking lessons from Gus.

So before all that, the president should consult with McFaul, not that this is really going to make much of a difference in terms of actual information. I mean, the president can just read The New York Times and The Guardian and even McFaul's Facebook and Twitter feeds.

Even so, there might be some confidential things left that McFaul could explain to Obama that might convince him to do the right thing and not go to St. Petersburg.

Plus, recalling an ambassador is a thing.

Usually, it's saved for special occasions of protest — we recalled our ambassador to Syria when his safety could no longer be protected (and he never returned as far as I recall).

But ambassadors are recalled all the time and then later return — like Turkey recalled its ambassador to the US in protest against the resolution validating the Armenian genocide. There was that time Hillary called in all the ambassadors for a meeting about some bureaucratic restructurings at the State Department which wasn't really a "recall" in the classic sense.

So sure. It doesn't have to amount to much and he can go back — but it is a protest and it might be useful.  If you have a tiger by the tail, better recall McFaul.