HOW’S OBAMA DOING? Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post: “The promise and the apology are the bookends of effective politics. President Obama has, tragically and perhaps irreparably, flubbed both. . . . Can he recover? I’m sorry to say: I’m not at all confident.”

Frankly, he doesn’t deserve to recover. He not only committed — as Marcus terms it — “political malpractice,” he also lied and then apparently sent a trillion-dollar project off to be managed without keeping tabs on it, so that it blew up in his face. At some level, I suppose, it’s not his fault that he’s utterly unqualified for the job he holds. But it is his fault that he sought it out twice, and lied to get it.