Sunday, September 15, 2013

Carney: Americans ‘Appreciate a President’ Who ‘Doesn’t Celebrate Decisiveness for Decisiveness’ Sake’
White House Press Sec. Jay Carney told Fox News Channel’s Senior White House Reporter Ed Henry on Thursday that Americans appreciate President Barack Obama’s shifting approach to the Syrian crisis. He said that the American people “appreciate a president” who “doesn’t celebrate decisiveness for decisiveness’ sake.”...

Olympus Has Fallen
Except for pundits like Andrew Sullivan who reacted to the president’s speech on Syria with delight (“That was one of the clearest, simplest and most moving presidential speeches to the nation I can imagine”), most people understood that the president left the building the moment he finished speaking. What’s left is Barack Obama, the sometime activist from Chicago. Sullivan stumbled on the truth by ending his adulatory article with this observation: “Yes, he’s still a community organizer. It’s just that now, the community he is so effectively organizing is the world.”

Fortunately, for almost everyone else the sad facts are plain enough. Maureen Dowd has even started calling him “Barry.” He’s the man who bought his political life from Putin at a staggering price. The Wall Street Journal observes that “Obama Rescues Assad.” Obama offered a deal “that could leave Assad in power for years,” according to the Times of London. The Washington Examiner says that Obama’s miscues “handed Russia the driver’s seat”; Foreign Affairs concurs....

...Assad scathingly called Obama not a president but the head of a social media network. One can only hope that Obama’s latest counteroffensive does not go astray, and that Russia doesn’t seize yet another misbegotten move by Barry — to use Maureen’s new endearment — to turn the tables on him yet again. Jennifer Rubin writes on Twitter: “if this were a Little League game the mercy rule would be invoked for Obama.” David Burge (known as Iowahawk) adds: “Putin now just basically doing donuts in Obama’s front yard.”...

...Putin has taken Barack Obama’s Narrative apart and handed him the smoking pieces in a bucket. Barry doesn’t even know how it happened, nor are his advisers any the wiser. Maybe it was a video. And anyway, “what difference does it make?” Obama may emerge from time to time, blinking in the unaccustomed light, seeking to respond in the only ways he knows how: with a speech; as a guest on Leno; firing a few desultory cruise missiles here or there at targets chosen not to matter; or to offer increasingly unaffordable amounts of money for “deals” that won’t last. And none of it will work....