On the night of his election, standing atop a stage in Grant Park, Barack Obama reiterated one of the central themes of his candidacy. “Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long,” the Great Unifier said.

In Denver, during the Democratic National Convention, he said this: “One of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other’s character and each other’s patriotism.”

So how are “resisting the partisan temptation” and “changing our politics” going in the Age of Obama?

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Just in case you weren’t convinced that the White House’s “anonymous foreign donors” scare-mongering during the midterm campaigns last year was a complete fabrication, the Los Angeles Times provides all the evidence you need:

Democrats putting together new independent political organizations for the 2012 campaign are embracing a model that will allow them to conceal their donors — the very tactic for which they criticized Republicans in 2010.

Two former Obama White House officials, Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney, are behind the planning of one of these groups, which will lend support to the president’s reelection bid. “As a spokesman for Obama, Burton repeatedly hammered Republican groups for their lack of transparency in 2010,” the Times reports.

“This is stunning in its hypocrisy,” said Jonathan Collegio, spokesman for American Crossroads.

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Glenn Reynolds, James Taranto, and Scott Johnson have all covered this story masterfully. Consider what follows a simple footnote for the historical record.

This week President Obama replied to a man who told the president that he is hard-pressed to buy gasoline for his van that he ought to trade it in for a new car with better mileage. Obama assured him he’d probably get a great deal these days—from GM, Ford, or Chrysler, he added. The Associated Press first reported this incident and then scrubbed it from its story; most of the media did not care about it at all, because Obama is awesome.

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The speculation about Richard Goldstone’s repudiation of his libelous report on Israel continues, but the more important story is that the events of 2008 are being tragically repeated this week. The exchange of fire over the border in the last few days illustrates that the Jewish state’s dilemma is no different today than it was then.

Earlier this week the Palestinians decided to initiate a new wave of terror attacks, launching more than 100 missiles from Gaza into southern Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was faced with a painful dilemma. If he failed to respond decisively, especially after the deliberate targeting of a school bus with a guided anti-tank missile, then he would be rightly accused of repeating his predecessor’s worst mistakes. Ehud Olmert spent 2008 pleading with the Palestinians to accept statehood and peace while southern Israel was blasted daily with increasingly deadly rocket attacks. His “restraint” convinced Hamas that he—and his country—were weak. But by the end of 2008, after the Palestinian Authority again rejected his offer of peace, he finally launched a full scale counter-attack to silence the rockets.

We can expect the same reaction as last time to Israel’s efforts to defend itself.

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Meet Israel’s partners in peace:

The Palestinian Authority has just honored the terrorist mastermind responsible for the ‘Passover Massacre’, a terrorist atrocity which claimed the lives of 30 innocent Israeli citizens . . . at Netanya’s Park Hotel on March 27, 2002. . . . [O]n March 28 Issa Karake, the Palestinian Authority Minister of Prisoners’ Affairs, visited the family of Hamas suicide-bomb mastermind Abbas Al-Sayed, awarding them with an official, festive plaque, in celebration of the anniversary of the massacre.

The Passover Massacre was the single deadliest attack carried out during the terror war, with 30 killed and 140 injured. Israel responded with Operation Defensive Shield, which included the mobilization of reserves to wipe out the terror infrastructure in the West Bank. Although the campaign cut Palestinian suicide bombings in half and ended Arafat’s relevance, the Palestinian Authority has much reason to commemorate the Passover Massacre and Defensive Shield.

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Up until now our “economic commander-in-chief” has been noticeably absent from the budget debate. Last week, the White House insisted he was tied up with that bothersome war in Libya. But now, as Politico reports, the administration claims his late entry into the debate was all part of a calculated political strategy:

The president’s late entry into direct talks was a calculated strategy, [administration officials] say, to avoid overexposing Democrats’ sole marquee star and to gain maximum leverage after House Republicans and Senate Democrats fell short of an agreement. . . . Despite his cool customer reputation, Obama has a distinct flair for the dramatic. Like the favorite in a prize fight, he enters the ring only after his opponent has shadow-boxed alone for a spell—hanging back until only he can finish the job.

So the White House is trying to convince us that his absence was really a form of leadership?

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The resilience of talk about the so-called “Turkish model” is amazing. The diplomats and analysts who banter it about recall an idealized past in which Turkey maintained separation of mosque and state. Those days are long since gone. Now word comes from the Turkish press that Prime Minister Erdogan has the ambition to reform Islamic finance internationally. His tool? Turkey’s Central Bank. Alas, this should not occasion any surprise: Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul worked in Islamic banking in Saudi Arabia, and upon taking power, Erdogan and Gul quietly replaced all the technocrats on Turkey’s banking board with Islamic banking experts. As Turkey heads for elections in June, the country is nearing the point of no return. One thing is certain. The Turks’ traditional dream of European Union membership is dead.

A couple of weeks ago, I observed that a PBS Frontline website had substituted biographies and official websites of conservatives with fake biographies and dossiers published by a fringe, hard-left group. When the editors pushed back that they did not see any inaccuracies, I documented several. You would think that PBS would realize that these political games soil its reputation but, alas, not so.

Now, PBS Frontline sinks even deeper. In an effort to discredit a group assembled by Freedom House and the Progressive Policy Institute which seeks to hold Iran more accountable on human rights, the program commissioned a hit piece by Robert Dreyfuss. What the editors do not mention, however, is that Dreyfuss was a longtime correspondent for Lyndon LaRouche’s flagship magazine, Executive Intelligence Review. Dreyfuss dedicates his first book—now free online as a .pdf—to his colleagues at LaRouche’s organization:

I wish to acknowledge the exciting and rewarding collaboration of my friends and colleagues at the Executive Intelligence Review. As the Middle East intelligence director of the EIR, it has been my privilege to enjoy the assistance of experienced analysts. . . .

Since Dreyfuss penned Hostage to Khomeini, neither his writing nor his methods have changed. A couple years, he fabricated a conversation with U.S. General, claiming that he had cornered him in the hallway after a speech.

It is far past time for the editors at PBS Frontline to consider their editorial integrity, but if they dig in their heels and prefer to play politics, it may be time for those who provide PBS with funds to start asking hard questions.

A lot of smart people I’ve spoken with in the last 12 hours are betting a government shutdown will take place. Count me skeptical. I simply don’t believe Speaker Boehner, who has been quite impressive since taking power in January, will allow a shutdown to occur based on a few riders and one-half of one percent of a $3.5 trillion budget. There is far too much for Republicans to lose and far too little for them to gain. My guess is that he’ll fight to the last hour, and maybe to the last minute—but then the outline of a deal will be struck and a shutdown will be averted.

Whether or not I’m right, one thing to notice is how President Obama has positioned himself in this showdown, which may foreshadow his 2012 re-election strategy. He is framing the debate not simply as a partisan clash but as an institutional one. It’s not simply Obama versus Republicans; it’s also the president versus Congress—a matchup Obama is bound to win.

Obama is adopting a pose that comes naturally to him: portraying the differences as petty while he hovers above it all. He (he president) is the exasperated and impatient parent of unruly and undisciplined children (Congress). One can overhear the strategy in Obama’s rhetoric: a deal should have been struck months ago; serious people should be able to reach a compromise; let’s gone on with the serious business of the nation. And so forth and so on.

It’s not a bad strategy. The favorability ratings for Congress are near record lows, and going after Congress as an institution rather than simply going after Republicans keeps the president from looking overly partisan—a huge turn-off to independent voters. And independent voters are the bloc Obama is most in need of winning back. This is the way by which he hopes to reclaim, at least in part, some of the magic of the 2008 election, when he offered himself as a post-partisan, unifying figure. I’m not sure the approach will work, but it’s politically smart of Obama to try it.

Maybe the Wisconsin Republicans won’t need those lawyers after all. Justice David Prosser has taken a substantial lead in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race with the discovery that the votes of an entire town in heavily Republican Waukesha County had not been added to the totals. When they were, Justice Prosser went from 204 votes down to leading by more than 7500, probably enough to eliminate an automatic state-wide recount.

The development quieted expectations that the race would be decided in a statewide recount. But it also set off a wave of skepticism from Democrats and union supporters, who had viewed the contest as an outlet for their fury at the Republican cuts to collective bargaining rights. Those forces had supported the challenger, and said they found it convenient that votes for the incumbent, Justice David Prosser, were suddenly discovered.

Unfortunately for them, the vice chairman of the Waukesha County Democratic Party—a classic, grandmotherly Midwesterner type—was at the canvas where the mistake was discovered and said at the press conference last evening that adding a net of 7500 votes for Prosser was entirely kosher (it’s at about 13:30 on the tape). So it looks as if Prosser, and Governor Walker’s reforms, will survive.

But this electoral minidrama just adds more evidence—as if evidence were needed—that the way we cast votes (and register to do so) and count them in this country needs a top-to-bottom overhaul, using the latest technology. The only reason that hasn’t been done is because political parties, who usually control the bureaucracies that run elections, prefer the fraud-riddled, wildly inefficient, and highly inaccurate system we now have.

But to paraphrase Georges Clemenceau, elections are too important to be left to politicians.

Turkey has a terrorism problem. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan publicly defended the ties between his adviser Cuneyd Zapsu and an al-Qaeda financier. He has embraced Hamas and has refused to speak up as the Palestinian terrorist group turns its guns on children, so long as they are Jewish children. He has defended both Hezbollah and Sudan’s genocidal dictator Omar El-Bashir.

Many Turkish officials point to Turkey’s contributions in Afghanistan, but fail to note that perhaps as many Turks fight with the Taliban as fight with NATO.

Now the Taliban reports that the Erdogan government has allowed the Taliban to open an office in Turkey. While official Washington has long recognized Pakistan’s double dealing with the Taliban, it seems that Turkey may soon become Pakistan Junior.

The irony, of course, is that Turkey talks a good game about engagement, but according to sources in the Turkish foreign ministry, Namik Tan and the Turkish embassy in the United States maintain a blacklist of Jews with whom Prime Minister Erdogan has forbidden discussion. But, when it comes to Turkey, that’s simply par for the course.

Everyday my American Enterprise Institute colleague Ali Alfoneh will cull the Iranian press and produce a daily summary. It really is an invaluable resource which several hundred U.S. government officials, senior military officers, and intelligence analysts make use of on a daily basis.

A couple days ago, Asr-e Iran published a series of photographs of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah’s family. The photographs must have upset someone in Tehran or in southern Lebanon, because the photographs were removed by the website. Unfortunately for Nasrallah, Google images already caught many of them, for example, here, here, here, here, and here.

Sleep well, Nasrallah clan. No one is now watching you, tracing your movements, gauging your complicity. Maybe Langley is asleep, but if the Iranians tried to take down those photos so quickly, I doubt that others are.

It may well be that Democrats will benefit politically from a government shutdown; indeed, that’s what the polls say, and it’s what has Speaker of the House John Boehner frightened. And more than Boehner. It’s striking that this morning, the staunchly pro-life Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania counseled his one-time colleagues in the House to ”move on, because there are other bigger battles we can be fighting.” One of the major sticking points for House Republicans is the defunding of federal grants for Planned Parenthood. If Toomey is saying “move on,” that’s a very big deal.

But the politics here in the long run are unpredictable, actually. If Washington is seen by the electorate as completely dysfunctional, that will not redound to the benefit of Barack Obama or the Democrats. The situation differs from 1995 in that it’s not a showdown between a Democratic president and a Republican Congress—because only one of the two chambers in Congress is controlled by the Republicans.

Perhaps even more important is the fact that Speaker of the House John Boehner is no Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich was a synecdoche for the resurgent Congressional Republicans whom he led to their smashing midterm victory in 1994, and by the time the shutdown rolled around, he had become a major public figure. In addition, he had been widely caricatured and was widely  disliked. When the shutdown became a Clinton vs. Gingrich battle, Gingrich and the Republicans didn’t have a chance. Gingrich and his supporters (I was one at the time, I confess) seemed to have forgotten that 45 million people voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 nationwide, while Gingrich garnered 119,000 in the suburbs of Atlanta in 1994; the newly minted House Speaker had no national constituency, in other words, while Clinton had an enormous one.

No one is successfully making this shutdown an Obama vs. Boehner fight, in part because Boehner isn’t rising to the bait and in part because Boehner just doesn’t occupy that kind of space on the American cultural and political landscape. He’s more likely to be made fun of for his propensity to choke up and spill a few tears than he is for musing grandly a la Gingrich about how liberalism led a South Carolina woman to drown her children so she could run off with a boyfriend.

Without a unifying negative symbol to represent them, Republicans are unlikely to provoke the degree of anger they did as a result of the 1995 shutdown. It won’t be good for them, but the long-term lasting political damage could be to both parties. Which is to say, the net effect by the time the election rolls around would be a wash.

At the Washington Post, Dana Milbank connects the demise of The Glenn Beck Show to the economic recovery:

On Friday, the unemployment rate dropped to 8.8 percent, as businesses added jobs for the 13th straight month. On Wednesday, Fox News announced that it was ending Glenn Beck’s daily cable-TV show. These are not unrelated events. . . .

Beck’s angry broadcasts about the nation’s imminent doom perfectly rode the wave of fear that had washed across the nation, and the relatively unknown entertainer suddenly had 3 million viewers a night—and tens of thousands answering his call to rally at the Lincoln Memorial. But as the recession began to ease, Beck’s apocalyptic forecasts and ominous conspiracies became less persuasive, and his audience began to drift away.

Where to begin?

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