This Just In

“WaPo: ‘President Obama’s foreign policy is based on fantasy,'” Ed Morrissey writes at Hot Air:

That’s not me being reductivist or twisting the meaning of yesterday’s lead editorial at the Washington Post. It’s a quote of their own headline, which is itself a good recapitulation of their overall message. Barack Obama and John Kerry talked about “19th century act[s]” and Vladimir Putin’s lack of game on “soft power,” but all that did was highlight the fantasy world both inhabit when it comes to the threats in this 21st-century reality:

FOR FIVE YEARS, President Obama has led a foreign policy based more on how he thinks the world should operate than on reality. It was a world in which “the tide of war is receding” and the United States could, without much risk, radically reduce the size of its armed forces. Other leaders, in this vision, would behave rationally and in the interest of their people and the world. Invasions, brute force, great-power games and shifting alliances — these were things of the past. Secretary of State John F. Kerry displayed this mindset on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday when he said, of Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine, “It’s a 19th century act in the 21st century.” …

Unfortunately, Russian President Vladimir Putin has not received the memo on 21st-century behavior. Neither has China’s president, Xi Jinping, who is engaging in gunboat diplomacy against Japan and the weaker nations of Southeast Asia. Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is waging a very 20th-century war against his own people, sending helicopters to drop exploding barrels full of screws, nails and other shrapnel onto apartment buildings where families cower in basements. These men will not be deterred by the disapproval of their peers, the weight of world opinion or even disinvestment by Silicon Valley companies. They are concerned primarily with maintaining their holds on power.

Gee, if only the Post and its subsidiary publications Slate and Newsweek had figured that out in 2008 — or even 2012 — before going all-in to support Mr. Obama. Which brings us to the passage below, which has made the rounds on the Internet and email lists for several years; one of Ace’s co-bloggers linked to it yesterday:

The danger to America is not Barack Obama, but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools, such as those who made him their President.

I don’t really blame the American people — particularly in 2008 — who voted for Obama. For over six years (allowing for a brief timeout in the left’s culture war during 9/11) they were bombarded with messages that George Bush was the anti-Christ. By 2007, began to be bombarded by a same volume of messages that Obama was the perfect cure — not just for American politics, but to the heartbreak of psoriasis and waxy yellow buildup as well. Given the media — including the Post, as their late ombudsperson Deborah Howell admitted in November of 2008 — went all-in to promote the man, it’s a wonder the election was as close as it was.

Related: “Hurts so bad that Palin was right and Obama-Media Industrial Complex wrong,” David Gerstman writes at Legal Insurrection. “For Politico and others, ‘sorry’ seems to be the hardest word.”

To paraphrase the  wisdom of our current Secretary of State, who wants to be the last leftist to watch his reputation die for his ideology’s past mistakes?