The Washington Post headline — “Experts question whether U.S. has a real Israel strategy or ‘talking points’” – suggests the disarray in the Obami’s approach and the general consternation that has greeted their bully-boyism directed at the Jewish state. Indeed, the Post can find no one but George Mitchell’s lackey Martin Indyk (more on him later) who agrees with Hillary Clinton’s obnoxious claim that the staged hissy fit with Israel is “paying off.” (And if it were bearing fruit, then we are back to amateur hour when Hillary announces as much, and on the Israel-hating BBC, of all places). Elliott Abrams dryly notes: “It has made life harder and has made negotiations harder for the Israelis and the Palestinians.” Certainly taunting one side in public has that effect.

We are now in a fencing match. Hillary demands some concessions; Bibi tries to serve up some small gesture or soothing platitude so Hillary and company can climb down off the roof on which they have perched themselves to impress their Palestinian friends. But all we have to show for this is Palestinian stone-throwing, a dead Thai worker, a strained but not yet broken relationship with Israel, and further reason for Palestinians to do what they do best — play victim and demand unilateral concessions.

But nothing is more telling than the comments of Indyk, an adviser to Mitchell, who presumably channels the Obami’s thinking:

Martin S. Indyk, vice president for foreign studies at the Brookings Institution and an adviser to Mitchell, said the administration in the past 10 days has made the Israeli government “supersensitive” to the issue of Jerusalem. He praised the administration for not revealing its demands and said U.S. officials adroitly turned down the heat as quickly as they turned it up.

“I think they handled it quite well,” he said.

Supersensitive about their eternal capital? Well, that’s one way — a particularly nasty and undiplomatic way – to express it but also a telling admission of how the administration picked a fight on the one issue that unites Israelis and that no government could, short of a final-status deal, compromise on housing. And his boast of adroitness — does that include the BBC bragging? The onslaught of condemnations? And three cheers, Indyk is leading, for the attempt to wring out of our ally even more concessions!

You see the problem: the members of this crew are high-fiving themselves for continuing, albeit in quieter tones, the same losing strategy they’ve been pursuing from the get-go. So do they have a real strategy? Definitely — the most counterproductive and dangerous one imaginable.

It is only fitting that, as the final votes are garnered for ObamaCare, one last insult to the intelligence of  voters and lawmakers is unveiled. Republicans pressed CBO on how much the bill would cost with the Medicare Doc Fix included. You recall that this measure to increase reimbursement rates to Medicare providers was artificially severed from the bill when it became too difficult (even for the numbers fudgers) to make the books balance with that item in ObamaCare. So it was sent to a separate piece of legislation to be voted on later this year.  This report explains:

Congressional budget scorekeepers say a Medicare fix that Democrats included in earlier versions of their health care bill would push it into the red. The Congressional Budget Office said Friday that rolling back a programmed cut in Medicare fees to doctors would cost $208 billion over 10 years. If added back to the health care overhaul bill, it would wipe out all the deficit reduction, leaving the legislation $59 billion in the red.

When pressed by Bret Baier on the fiscal gamesmanship in separating out the Doc Fix, Obama offered no stellar answer. To be fair, there is none. This is cook-the-books legislating at its worst. The exchange was revealing:

BAIER: And you call this deficit neutral, but you also set aside the doctor fix, more than $200 billion. People look at this and say, how can it be deficit neutral?

OBAMA: But the – as you well know, the doctors problem, as you mentioned, the “doctors fix,” is one that has been there four years now. That wasn’t of our making, and that has nothing to do with my health care bill. If I was not proposing a health care bill, right – let’s assume that I had never proposed health care.

BAIER: But you wanted to change Washington, Mr. President. And now you’re doing it the same way.

OBAMA: Bret, let me finish my – my answers here. Now, if suddenly, you’ve got, over the last decade, a problem that’s been built up. And the suggestion is somehow that, because that’s not fixed within this bill, that that’s a reason to vote against the bill, that doesn’t make any sense. That’s a problem that I inherited. That was a problem that should have been solved a long time ago. It’s a problem that needs to be solved, but it’s not created by my bill. And I don’t think you would dispute that.

Translation: it’s not his fault. Got that?

Well, the issue boiled over on Friday when a purported Democratic strategy memo was leaked that essentially told members and staff to hush up about the Doc Fix. The memo’s authenticity was questioned, but the strategy is plainly right out of the Democratic playbook. As Yuval Levin explains, the hodgepodge of accounting tricks and ”keeping the ‘doc fix’ separate from the health-care bills they are getting ready to vote on was key to allowing the Democrats to get a CBO score that seemed to keep the bill from raising the deficit.” It’s a Ponzi scheme of the first order. And they only need a few more votes to pass it.

Throughout this process, we’ve seen in what low regard the president and Congressional leaders hold the public and their own members. The Doc Fix is only the latest and perhaps final insult. But on a brighter note, Minority Leader John Boehner is forcing all members to announce their votes from the floor. How dramatic and transparent! Moreover, it will make for dandy ads against all the Democrats who decided to walk the plank for Obama and Pelosi. You can see them now — all the grainy photos interspersed with big red numbers tallying the addition to the deficit as a voiceover announcer explains it was all an exercise in smoke and mirrors accounting. This is how wave elections are made.

While Hillary Clinton congratulates herself for the state of U.S.-Israeli relations, she is, for now, on the receiving end of what one might genuinely call an affront. It seems that Vladimir Putin read her the riot act  — in front of the onlooking news corps. Oh, yes. ABC News reports:

When reporters traveling with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Moscow were informed that a last-minute meeting with Russia’s Prime Minister Valdimir Putin had been added to the schedule, they were told they would only get to see a few seconds of handshakes before being ushered out.

Instead, with cameras rolling, they watched Putin spend six minutes rattling off a number of complaints he has with the United States.

He barked about trade and scolded her about the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment. “Reporters were surprised at the length of Putin’s list of issues and the fact that he did it in front of the Russian and American press corps, a pool reporter noted.” In other words, Putin went out of the way to bully the U.S. Secretary of State in public. Just to show who is boss? And this follows the announcement that, instead of cooperating to isolate Iran, Russia will build a nuclear power plant for the mullahs — an announcement issued to “greet” Hillary.

In short, the Russians have now shown us what resetting the U.S.-Russian relationship means. Putin has figured out that there is no risk — so long as you aren’t a small democratic ally of the U.S. — of incurring the wrath of the Obami. No condemnations or even frowns will be forthcoming. This is, you see, what comes from throwing ourselves at our adversaries’ feet and scorning our allies. Adversaries learn to take advantage of us while friends learn not to trust us.

And where does that leave our Iran policy? No prospect of international sanctions. The U.S. sanctions bill is languishing in Congress. The mullahs feel neither isolated nor besieged. It is not they whom the Obami are pressuring this week. We eagerly await Hillary’s Monday speech to AIPAC when she can explain the wizardry at work here. We’ll be all ears.

No affront, no insult taken when Hillary Clinton is dissed by Putin and told that Russia is going ahead with its plans to help the mullahs build a nuclear reactor. Condemnation to follow? “Another full affrontal from the forces of tyranny against visiting American diplos. Since the slap came to Hillary this time, who makes the sassy 43-minute phone call to Putin? Is it Joe? Barack Obama himself? Maybe Bill should step in for his gal?” Now, Bill Clinton — there’s an idea.

How’s the Russian “reset” working out? “Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Russia will help Iran launch its first nuclear power plant this summer, delivering a diplomatic slap to visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a blow to U.S.-led efforts to increase financial pressure on Tehran. … Mr. Putin’s comments come as the Obama administration has endured other slights on the global stage in recent weeks. Israel’s government announced new construction in disputed East Jerusalem during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden last week. Chinese officials have rebuffed U.S. calls for a revaluing of the yuan and greater Internet freedoms.”

Tony Rezko’s banker’s worst clients aren’t the mobsters. They’re the mullahs.

Eric Cantor blasts Obama’s double standard on Israel.

The ObamaCare effect: “The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 23% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -21. That matches the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for this President. … Each time the President leads a big push for his health care plan, his job approval ratings suffer.”

On a possible Obama meeting with Bibi, Ben Smith deadpans: “It seems reasonable at some point to ask what purpose the high-level American expressions of outrage last week wound up serving.”

What does Tom Campbell think of the Obama fight with Israel? At approximately 5:20 on the video, he seems not to have any problem with Joe Biden or the administration’s approach. His GOP opponents both excoriated the Obami.

They keep making it worse, explains Bill Kristol: “Nancy Pelosi and Louise Slaughter have come up with a parliamentary maneuver — ‘deem and pass’ — reeking of evasiveness and trickery that Democratic members are going to have to embrace. But it gets better! The point of ‘deem and pass’ is to allow representatives to vote directly only on the reconciliation ‘fixes’ rather than on the Senate health care bill (which will be deemed to be passed if reconciliation passes). But the reconciliation ‘fixes’ make the Senate bill even more politically unattractive.” Honest! More taxes and more Medicare cuts.

It didn’t sound like there was a deal to be had: “Even the leading proponent of a deal to close the Guantanamo Bay prison is throwing cold water on talk that such a compromise is imminent. A spokesman for Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) dismissed a report in the Wall Street Journal Friday that the White House and a bipartisan group of senators were nearing agreement to close Guantanamo and settle a series of related thorny issues, including sending alleged September 11 plotters to military commissions.”

This report suggests that the Obami have learned exactly nothing from the smash-up with Israel over the Jerusalem housing expansion:

In an interview with the BBC’s Kim Ghattas today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the toughness of the U.S. reaction to the Israeli government’s East Jerusalem housing announcement last week is “paying off” as the U.S. now expects negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians to resume.

She also said that contrary to some reports, the U.S. is not interested in forcing a shuffle in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition. She said, however, that it’s Netanyahu’s responsibility to “make sure that he brings in everyone else” in his government he needs to to pursue negotiations with the Palestinians.

Hillary seems positively delighted with the crimp put in U.S.-Israeli relations. Do you think she’ll repeat that at her AIPAC appearance Monday morning? Or is boasting about roughing up Bibi just a morsel for consumption by the Israel-bashing BBC? Meanwhile, one wonders whether Hillary considers this among her successes:

While a tense calm has prevailed in the capital since rioting rocked its eastern neighborhoods Tuesday, Jerusalem Police on Thursday announced that the deployment of more than 3,000 police officers throughout the Old City and east Jerusalem would continue Friday, and access to the Temple Mount would be restricted, amid fears that prayers there could give way to renewed clashes.

The heightened police presence has been in effect since last Friday, when tensions in the area began to build and sporadic clashes erupted inside the Old City’s Muslim Quarter and in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Ras al-Amud.

I’m sure an imaginary condemnation is sure to follow.

Even when trying to repair the gash in the fabric of U.S. relations, administration figures can’t keep their “condemn”s to themselves. In Moscow (more about that), Hillary Clinton employed the now familiar Obami tactic — praise generically and skewer specifically our ally Israel. One the one hand, she proclaims Bibi’s effort to soothe Hillary’s affronted and insulted boss “useful and productive.” But then she’s at it again. She pronounces, in case anyone had missed it, that “we all condemned the announcement, and we all are expecting both parties to move toward the proximity talks and to help create an atmosphere in which those talks can be constructive.” Meanwhile we learn:

Friday’s meeting came amid new fears about the deteriorating security situation in the Middle East. On Thursday night, Israel carried out air strikes on six sites in the Gaza Strip in what it said was retaliation for a rocket attack from Gaza on a southern Israeli town that killed a Thai worker. [Did anyone condemn the murder of the Thai worker?]

The prospects for reviving the peace process were already murky. The Palestinian Authority insists it will not negotiate until Israel freezes construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Israel’s housing plan, Mrs. Clinton said, further soured the atmosphere.

You see, it’s Israel’s fault. On the verge of peace talks — indirect ones, because the Palestinians can’t even get in the room with the Israelis, of course — when along comes the “affront.” It works like this: the Obami provide the pretext; the Palestinians bring the intransigence. You can imagine the dialogue between the West Wing and Foggy Bottom: What to use? The Ramat Shlmo housing announcement! Nah — absurd! No, no — that’ll work! No provocation of violence, no murder by Israel’s foes warrants such a retort. (Funny how the White House never got back to me on my follow-up inquiry.) Israel is in a class by itself.

And the Quartet gets into the “condemn” act. (”Israel’s housing plan was condemned for the second time in a week by the Quartet, a group that focuses on Middle East peace and comprises the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.”)

This is the new normal — Israel bashed at every turn by its “friends.” I think we have reached the point, as a clear-sighted observer noted, where “Israel’s last line of defense against false claims and promises — the United States — has made itself indistinguishable from the United Nations and Amnesty International and all the other NGOs and religious denominations that have declared virtual war against the Jewish State.”

In the end the proximity talks will collapse (before or after they convene), Palestinian violence will increase, and Israel will learn that they better not rely on the Obami. And meanwhile the mullahs — oh, them — proceed with their nuclear program. And if the Obami “condemn” Israel for approving apartments in Jerusalem, can we imagine the reaction should Israel decide to launch a preemptive attack on Iran? That may be the underlying message of all the “condemn”s.

Jews, next to African Americans, have been Obama’s most loyal supporters. Overwhelmingly Democratic, and liberal Democratic at that, they have swooned over health care, been delighted by the president’s efforts to pass climate-control legislation, taken delight in his defense of abortion rights, and cheered his unabashed embrace of big government. But there has been the matter of Israel. Oh, that.

It stunned some to be told by Obama to go engage in “self-reflection” about Israel. It rankled to hear the Obami declare that we needed more “daylight” between the U.S. and Israel. And the failed settlement-freeze gambit set teeth gnashing. But most American Jews bided their time. They hoped that with all that access and all the campaign money that had sloshed into the Obama coffers from Jewish wallets, there would be some way to influence the administration. Maybe the Obama team was getting up to speed. They’d learn! Hey, there were some good lines in the Nobel Prize speech, you know. Maybe soon we’d get those sanctions! It was, sadly, an exercise in self-delusion.

Then came the Obami’s verbal assault over apartment units in Israel’s capital. That was finally a step too far. As the Obama administration’s browbeatings of Israel  mounted — Biden to Clinton to Axelrod — the fury in the Jewish community overflowed. And one by one, the major Jewish organizations, reflecting the outrage of their members (mostly Democratic, mind you), stepped forward not only to demand an end to the barrage but also to critique the entire premise of the Obami Middle East policy, namely that settlements were the root of the matter and that forced concessions were the way to unlock peace. And oh, by the way, could we get back to the existential threat to Israel’s existence?

Beginning Sunday, AIPAC will hold its annual national conference, and thousands of pro-Israel activists will descend on Washington D.C. What will they say and how will they greet the administration’s featured speaker, Hillary Clinton? This is a time to assess where the Jewish community has been and whether “access” — the prized off-the-record briefing and the ticket to the White House Chanukah party — has been valued too highly and candor too little. And then decisions will need to be made about the support for this president. A keen observer probes those who invested (financially and otherwise) so much in a president who has made mincemeat of foreign policy generally and the Middle East specifically:

A year has passed during which your chosen one has made worse than a hash of that: It’s in deep disarray. It and he and all his dogsbodies have devalued us everywhere, pinballing reactively from crisis to disaster, and when they should be fighting withdrawing like snails into shells, leaving behind just the slime souvenir. And, worse, much worse, they’ve targeted our one true democratic friend and ally in the Middle East—a country whose existence you cherish—for censure and contempt, to your great shock and unhappiness. What do you do?

That’s the question before American Jewry. As many prominent leaders and activists gather, we’ll begin to find out their answer. But there is no denying it now — this was not the president many of them thought he was. If they wish to support him, despite his Israel policy (because the liberal agenda is so near and dear to them), they can do so. But there’s no kidding themselves any longer that, in the process, they will be supporting the most anti-Israel president since — well, ever.

According to this report, Bibi is looking for ways to cool the Obami’s self-induced furor over the Jerusalem housing project:

Israel is willing to carry out trust-building moves in the West Bank in order to facilitate peace talks with the Palestinian Authority, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday.

In a phone call between Netanyahu and Clinton, the Israeli PM reportedly conveyed a detailed list of gestures Jerusalem was willing to perform in order to restart negotiations with the Palestinians. … These measure likely include the release of Palestinian prisoners, the removal of West Bank checkpoints and perhaps even a willingness to transfer West Bank territories to PA control.

As for the housing activity that was the pretext for the spat, Jackson Diehl reports:

According to press reports in both countries, Clinton demanded in a phone call last Friday that Netanyahu reverse the decision by a local council to advance the construction of 1,600 new units in a neighborhood called Ramat Shlomo, a Jewish neighborhood outside Israel’s 1967 borders. Fortunately the State Department has not confirmed that position officially — though it has now been adopted by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as a condition for proceeding with the talks.

Netanyahu would never take that step. First, he might be barred from doing so under Israeli law; more importantly, building new Jewish housing in Jerusalem is one of the few issues that virtually all Israelis agree on. No government would formally agree to suspend it — nor is such a suspension necessary to reach an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement. Leading Israelis and Palestinians — including Abbas — have repeatedly agreed, beginning a decade ago, that as part of any final settlement Israel will annex the Jewish neighborhoods it has built in Jerusalem since 1967, as well as nearby settlements in the West Bank. In return Palestinians will exercise sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem and receive compensatory land in Israel.

The Israeli hope is that rather than continue to press this self-defeating demand, Obama will accept Israeli assurances that the new neighborhood will not be constructed anytime soon; it is, in fact, two or three years from groundbreaking. Coupled to that would be an Israeli pledge to avoid publicizing further construction decisions in Jerusalem. The result would not be a freeze, but something like a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for settlement.

In other words, Bibi is doing everything possible to allow the Obami to unwind from the snit they have worked themselves into over a housing issue that is, of course, entirely ignorable, as the suggested solution proves. And will he and the president meet when Bibi is in town for AIPAC, now that the president won’t be conveniently out of town? We don’t know. One hopes the president’s pique, so evident in the recent assault (the president’s “anger” was conveyed, the language of “affront” and “insult” was bantered about) will be put aside. For doesn’t the president — who’s shown himself to be particular peevish and lacking in diplomatic finesse — need to show he can make a gesture? It might be wise to bestir himself to invite Bibi over. And maybe even give him a photo op or two.

Oddly, I see no mention of trust-building moves demanded of the Palestinians after their calls to “rage” and the celebratory naming of a square after terrorist Dalal Mughrabi. Isn’t some gesture being asked of them? After all, White House spokesman Tommy Vietor assured me yesterday that “we are using our leverage.” But only with one side, for it’s foolhardy, I suppose the administration thinking goes, to actually ask anything of the Palestinians. And this is the posture going into the proximity talks — which were designed to satisfy the Palestinians who can’t bring themselves to accept Bibi’s invitation for direct talks. The infantilization of the Palestinians continues — they can’t control their own violence, so therefore we don’t demand they do. Just come to the proximity talks and George Mitchell will do all the work!

This is why no peace is ever processed. The Palestinians know that nothing is demanded of them and that they can riot in the streets, collect concessions, tout their success, foot-stomp some for more goodies, and wait for another round of concessions. Call it the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” It’s a formula for getting nowhere with the peace process. It’s also encouraging them to keep up the violence. Why shouldn’t they — there’s everything to be gained and nothing to be lost.

This week we have seen two major stories play out — the health-care vote and the Obama administration’s verbal attack on Israel. In each case we have seen the administration behave in ways no predecessor has. On health care, we’re seeing rank lawlessness in pursuit of a mammoth new entitlement program. In the Middle East, we are witnessing treatment of and rhetoric directed at the Jewish state that few if any administrations have employed. In both cases we are seeing, therefore, “change” — the abandonment of legislative normalcy and of the intimate relationship with an ally. But that’s not, I think, what was most striking about the week’s events.

What was most remarkable in a very remarkable week was the degree to which the administration double-downed on policies wildly at odds with the overwhelming sentiment of the country. The poll data is unmistakable on this point. The public intensely dislikes ObamaCare and the strong-arm tactics being used to push it through. Poll data and the reaction of members of Congress also confirm that support for Israel is at an all-time high. Yet the Obami have decided to corner and bully — because they think they can — a small, democratic ally. The administration is indifferent to and largely contemptuous of public opinion on these matters, preferring to push its own ideological agenda despite widespread criticism and mounting popular opposition.

In the short run, the administration might “win.” ObamaCare could sneak through. Israel might be roughed up. But the Obami then face the grim consequences of their actions. The tidal wave of reaction to ObamaCare awaits them should they pass (or “deem” or whatever) the monstrous bill into law. And the Middle East will grow ever more dangerous as the real threat to our security — Iran’s nuclear program — goes unchecked.

No administration or Congress can survive by pursuing policies the public intensely disapproves. Eventually voters get their say and enact revenge. And the policies that were so at odds with the concerns and values of the public then will be reversed. But there is no putting the genie back in the bottle should the mullahs acquire nuclear weapons. That’s forever, and will, if it occurs, be a blot on this administration that obscures any other accomplishment.

Obama said he’d be content to be a one-term president. That’s looking quite likely unless the results of the November election persuade him to cease the assault on the American voters by pursuing domestic and international policies they do not support. Obama, in one of his more arrogant moments, deflected Republican criticism of the stimulus plan by saying, “I won.” Yes, but that only works until the voters crown new winners.

As we’ve noted for sometime, Eric Holder is not exactly wowing either the Right or the Left. As Michael Gerson observes:

Attorney General Eric Holder is controversial on the left for preserving much of the Bush administration’s legal structure for conducting the war on terror. He is controversial on the right for overturning portions of that structure in ways that seem both clueless and reckless. But Holder is the most endangered member of the Obama Cabinet for a different reason: Just about everything he has touched has backfired.

We had the decision to release the enhanced interrogation memos and reinvestigate previously cleared CIA operatives. Result: widespread criticism. Then we had the recommendation to release the detainee-abuse photos. Result: countermanded. We had the advice to close Guantanamo prior to a full review. Result: stalled. We had the recommendation to relocate Guantanamo detainees to Illinois and to hold a public trial for KSM. Result: on hold. There was the Mirandizing of the Christmas Day bomber. Result: ridiculed. This week Holder suggested that we’d never capture Osama bin Laden, because, of course, we’d kill him if we found him. Result: rebuffed by two national-security officials. We also witnessed the ongoing legal persecution of John Yoo and Jay Bybee. Result: reversal by a career attorney who found gross incompetence within the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility. Then there is the race issue: the dismissal of the New Black Panther case and the accusation that we are a nation of ”cowards.” Quite a track record, eh?

As Gerson concludes:

Sometimes haplessness can provoke sympathy. But Holder mixes ineptness with self-righteousness. Critics of his questionable choices, he says, “cower.” They lack “confidence in the American system of justice.” But there is another possibility. Perhaps Holder’s critics — in Congress, in the country and even within the White House — just lack confidence in his judgment.

For now, Holder doesn’t appear to be in immediate peril, in no small part because he has been spared (with a Democrat-controlled Congress) the humiliating oversight hearings of the sort Alberto Gonzales received. But one doubts whether he’ll be around at year’s end. At some point, he and the Obami will want to cut their losses.

James Taranto, like many of us, is trying to decipher what it is that would motivate professional politicians, who’ve succeeded by carefully assessing public opinion and working within legislative and constitutional rules, to behave so bizarrely. Here’s reconciliation! I see your reconciliation and raise you a Slaughter Rule! And so it goes. What’s next? (Perhaps C-SPAN can superimpose a blue dot over the face of floor speakers so as to maintain their anonymity.) Taranto concludes:

What accounts for the relentless drive to ram ObamaCare through every procedural obstacle, regardless of the political cost? Ideological zeal, from Obama himself above all, is part of the explanation, but it isn’t sufficient. One can, after all, be ideologically committed to a goal without falling into a self-defeating obsession.

There seems to be an emotional desperation at work here. The legislative success of ObamaCare has become so tied up with Obama’s sense of himself that he feels he must push ahead–and to some extent, the leaders in Congress feel the same way. Obama is not the calm rationalist he seemed during the campaign. But while there’s a place for passion in politics, to be governed by a politician who fails to govern his passions is a frightening and creepy experience.

Indeed, Obama let on that this frenzy to achieve passage of a hugely irresponsible and politically unpopular bill was in large part ego-driven when he started hounding House Democrats to save his presidency. (He, however, has no interest in saving their congressional careers as he demands that they walk the plank to vote against their constituents’ wishes.)

But should we be surprised? This was the candidate who created a cult of personality, who told us he represented the “New Politics,” who was going to eschew politics-as-usual, and who would be post-partisan, post-racial, and post-ideological. Now he’s a handful of votes away from a humiliating defeat. No wonder it’s desperation time. His possible failure would not be a mere political failure; it would be the obliteration of his own mythology.

Should he squeak it out, Obama’s “victory” would come with a heavy price. Gone is the image of a policy sophisticate (try watching that Bret Baier interview a few times without wincing). Gone is the “moderate” moniker. And gone is the notion that he’d usher in a new era of less contentious and less corrupt politics. (It’s a new era, perhaps, but hardly a better one.) There is no mistaking now the depth of the campaign deception. The public has figured out what he is all about. And increasingly, they dislike what they see.

If the health-care reform debate went on for a few more months, Obama’s approval might wind up in the 30s. For now, it is on the skids as the public focuses on how devoted the president is to a very radical bill to be passed by very radical means. And the most recent polling shows just how unpopular the centerpiece of his agenda is.

In the Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll, Obama has hit an all-time low (46 percent approval). Voters oppose ObamaCare by a 55 to 35 percent margin. A 46 percent plurality want Congress to start over. By a whopping 52 to 27 percent margin, voters think the quality of their health care will be worse. By an even larger 62 to 22 percent margin, voters think they will wind up spending more on health care if it passes. And 75 percent expect their taxes to go up. Sixty eight percent think the government shouldn’t be allowed to force Americans to buy insurance.

The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll isn’t much better. At 48 percent approval, he is near that survey’s all-time low. On health care, 57 percent disapprove of his performance. Sixty percent say it’s better when Congress and the White House are controlled by different parties. By a 48 to 36 percent margin, this poll’s respondents oppose ObamaCare. By a 36 to 28 margin, voters are more likely to vote against their representative if he/she voted for ObamaCare.

Well, you get the picture. Obama’s own popularity is cratering as the public learns more about the monstrous health-care bill, which they very much dislike. Obama isn’t helping to sell health-care “reform” — he’s being dragged under by it. The question is whether those final dozen or so House Democrats on the fence will succumb to White House pressure, or whether they will choose instead to hop off a sinking ship.

As we dig deeper into the flap over Jerusalem housing activity, it is worth revisiting a central question: who blindsided whom here?

Hillel Halkin argues that four months ago, the U.S. and Israel had a deal: “Israel reluctantly agreed to suspend all new construction in the West Bank for nearly a year, and the U.S. reluctantly accepted Israel’s refusal to do the same in Jerusalem. … On that basis, the Netanyahu government declared a West Bank freeze and began to enforce it, despite the anger this caused on the pro-settlement Israeli Right from which many of Mr. Netanyahu’s voters come. Now, America has reneged on its word. Using the Ramat Shlomo incident as a pretext, it is demanding once again, as if an agreement had never been reached, that Israel cease all construction in ‘Arab’ Jerusalem.”

Elliott Abrams, deputy national security adviser under George W. Bush, concurs:

The United States and Israel have long had different views of the settlements, but the issue has been managed without a crisis for decades. In the Bush administration, a deal was struck whereby the United States would not protest construction inside existing settlements so long as they did not expand outward. The current crisis, ostensibly about construction in Jerusalem, was manufactured by the Obama administration–and as it is about Jerusalem, isn’t even about activity in the settlements.

Every Israeli government since 1967, of left or right, has asserted that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital and has allowed Israeli Jews to build there. … To escalate that announcement into a crisis in bilateral relations and “condemn” it–using a verb we apply to acts of murder and terror, not acts of housing construction–was a decision by the U.S. government, not a natural or inevitable occurrence.

And Dan Senor adds this:

[T]he Obama administration’s decision to “condemn” this mistake was a much larger blunder. The problem is not this particular flap, which will pass, but the underlying misunderstanding that our government’s outburst reflects. Vice President Biden himself said in Israel that the peace process is best served when there is no “daylight” between the United States and Israel. He was right, but he broke his own rule. The word “condemn”–which has only been used by the United States against Iran, North Korea, and egregious human rights violations–created precisely such daylight. The result was predictable: The Arab League immediately announced that it was reconsidering its support for Israeli-Palestinian proximity talks.

So to return to the query: was it the administration that was blindsided — insulted, even! — by a midlevel bureaucratic snafu, or was the Israeli government blindsided by the screeching from the administration, which had no basis to believe there had been any commitment to halt housing development in Jerusalem?  It seems the latter is more likely.

And then there remains the issue of “perspective” — which the nervy Obami implored us all to find as their handiwork was met with a firestorm of protest. We should consider perspective in two ways: how big a deal the housing announcement is and what the incident tells us about the Obami’s own perspective on the Middle East. As for the former, the Obami’s indignation was grossly disproportionate to the matter at hand and was trumpeted most likely for the express purpose of ingratiating Obama with the Palestinians and “preserving” the “peace process.” (Didn’t work out that way, as Senor pointed out.) But the Obami’s perspective — and lack of foresight — is the more troubling of the two sorts of perspective. It should tell Israel and its supporters precisely the challenge they face: how can the U.S.-Israeli relationship weather the Obama administration? We can only hope that the justified outrage that members of Congress and the American Jewish community demonstrated — waking from its slumber — will serve to temper the Obami’s conduct, and in turn help preserve the U.S.-Israeli relationship until cooler heads and warmer hearts occupy the White House.

The National Jewish Democratic Council attacks other Jewish organizations for going after Obama on the Israel-bashing. Well, it’s nice to know what the NJDC’s priorities are.

In a radio interview, Carly Fiorina sounds quite knowledgeable on the Jerusalem housing project and bashes Obama for blowing up the incident. She asks why the administration “says nothing” when Syria and Iran talk about the destruction of Israel. She calls on Barbara Boxer to say something. (Boxer has been silent.)

Chuck DeVore also puts out a strong statement excoriating Obama. “For the Administration to ‘condemn’ — the strongest possible diplomatic language — the construction of some apartments in a historically Jewish section of Jerusalem does nothing to advance the cause of peace, and still less the security of our country. Peace is advanced through strength, not weakness — and through unity, not division. At a stroke, President Obama has diminished both.”

Cliff May: “How do you explain the strange calculus that condemns building homes for citizens and condones celebrating terrorism? You start by understanding not how the “peace process” works — because it doesn’t — but how ‘peace processors’ think. They have convinced themselves that the Palestinians will make peace with the Israelis when and if the Israelis make sufficient concessions. So the pressure must always be on the Israelis to offer more concessions.”

Charles Krauthammer in his not-to-be missed smackdown of Obama notes: “Under Obama, Netanyahu agreed to commit his center-right coalition to acceptance of a Palestinian state; took down dozens of anti-terror roadblocks and checkpoints to ease life for the Palestinians; assisted West Bank economic development to the point where its gross domestic product is growing at an astounding 7 percent a year; and agreed to the West Bank construction moratorium, a concession that Secretary Clinton herself called ‘unprecedented.’ What reciprocal gesture, let alone concession, has Abbas made during the Obama presidency? Not one.” Read the whole thing.

More bad news for incumbents: “A gauge of future economic activity rose 0.1 percent in February, suggesting slow economic growth this summer, a private research group said Thursday.”

The ObamaCare effect? “Obama’s job approval in the RCP Average has gone net negative for the first time ever as well. Currently 47.3% of those surveyed approve of the job Obama is doing as President, while 47.8% disapprove.”

That was due, in part, to Gallup: “President Barack Obama’s job approval is the worst of his presidency to date, with 46% of Americans approving and 48% disapproving of the job he is doing as president in the latest Gallup Daily three-day average. … The new low ratings come during a week in which the White House and Democratic congressional leaders are working to convince wavering House Democrats to support healthcare reform, which they hope to pass using a series of parliamentary maneuvers in the House of Representatives and Senate. Americans hold Congress in far less esteem than they do the president — 16% approve and 80% disapprove of the job Congress is doing. … That is just two points off the record-low 14% Gallup measured in July 2008.”

I e-mailed White House spokesman Tommy Vietor this morning, asking for the basis for Obama’s claim that “we condemned them [the Palestinians, about their call to violence] in the same way” the administration did with Israel, concerning the housing-complex announcement. He replied this afternoon, citing the very same language I recited in my earlier post. He added: “So are we using our leverage? We are using our leverage. But we also recognize that these are difficult issues for both sides. So we are using our leverage, but we have to be realistic at the same time.” I’m not sure what that means — that it’s not “realistic” to condemn Palestinian violence?

But, wait — none of those statements, which both Vietor and I are looking at, use the word “condemn.” I have asked Vietor again: “So what was the President referring to when he said to Baier ‘we condemned them in the same way’?” Let’s see what the White House has to say.

We all know what is going on here: The White House doesn’t hold the Palestinians to any standard remotely akin to that employed for Israel, which, after all, is our ally. The president only made that point even more apparent by not accurately conveying our recent statements.

Reader Renee asks me whether ObamaCare can be repealed if signed into law. The short answer is yes. First off, if they utilize the ” deem and pass” Slaughter Rule, there will be court challenges. And those states that pass prohibitions on the requirement for citizens to buy insurance will challenge the law as well. There will also be other legal challenges. But really, all it would take is a new law.

But what about those “you can’t repeal this” provisions and “supermajority requirements” snuck into the nooks and crannies of ObamaCare? They really are meaningless. Robert Alt, senior legal fellow and deputy director of the Center for Legal & Judicial Studies of the Heritage Foundation, confirms the adage that “One Congress cannot bind a future Congress.” He explains:

The only question is whether the new statute itself meets the requirements of bicameralism and presentment (ahh, something that until recently we have rather taken for granted). If it does, then it must be given effect unless it is unconstitutional — and there is nothing unconstitutional about repealing a prior bill. While the courts will give the prior statute’s language its maximum effect, the new statute would be just as much the “law of the land,” and thus a statement in the new statute that “notwithstanding the supermajority or ‘no repeal’ requirement in the health care bill, HR XXXX is hereby repealed” would have to be given effect by the courts.

Now what’s needed for that is a new Congress willing to repeal a prior Congress’s handiwork and a president willing to sign the repeal. (Or a congressional majority so large as to override a presidential veto.)  That, as Obama keeps telling us, is what elections are for.

Steny Hoyer notwithstanding, CBO didn’t actually, finally score the bill. CBO says it “completed a preliminary estimate.” Hoyer, of course, would like to lock down wavering Democrats, but CBO cautions: “Although CBO completed a preliminary review of legislative language prior to its release, the agency has not thoroughly examined the reconciliation proposal to verify its consistency with the previous draft. This estimate is therefore preliminary, pending a review of the language of the reconciliation proposal, as well as further review and refinement of the budgetary projections.” Well, if we aren’t exactly going to vote on the bill, then I guess we don’t exactly need a firm CBO estimate.

But there are some numbers that should alarm the fence-sitters. Rasmussen tells us: “Fifty percent (50%) of U.S. voters say they are less likely to vote for their representative in Congress this November if he or she votes for the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. … 51% of voters not affiliated with either major party are less likely to support someone who votes for the legislation. Just 32% of unaffiliateds are more likely to vote for someone who supports the bill.”

So you can see why Hoyer is so desperate to grab on to a CBO number, anything, to divert members away from political realities and their own nagging sense that this is all a Ponzi scheme. And if you think there’s any doubt about that, consider this exchange between Obama and Bret Baier, where it becomes obvious what a fiscal flimflam is going on here:

If ObamaCare passes, it will be in spite of and not because of Obama. Let’s review what he has contributed to the effort in the last day. First, there was his appallingly weak interview with Bret Baier, in which he seemed at odds to explain his own bill. And what “facts” he offered seemed to be made up.

Second, Pew is out with another poll showing the president’s approval dropping to 46 percent. By a 48-to-38 percent margin, voters oppose ObamaCare. A huge 71 percent of those polled say that the cost of health care will go up under the bill. The Center Right coalition is amassing: ”Fully 81% of Republicans generally oppose the current bills while 62% of Democrats generally favor them. Far more independents still oppose (56%) than favor (32%) the health care bills.”

Third, Obama once again made this issue all about him. He is now pleading with House members to save his presidency. After all, what is really important here is that he not be disgraced. I’m sure members will be delighted to know that such is the rationale for casting potentially career-ending votes.

Now — all is not lost, of course, for the Democrats. Not by a long shot. CBO has coughed up its scoring, showing that the bill will cost $940B over ten years. Minus the Doc Fix. And with the accounting gimmicks, of course. If a House Democrat was inclined to help the president, this may help give cover. For those who have long stopped buying the funny numbers, this will be a yawn.

So it comes down to this for on-the-fence House Democrats: take one for the team (i.e., to save Obama) or save themselves from the wrath of the voters? We’ll find out if and when they vote, as Steny Hoyer promised, on Sunday.

In his interview with Bret Baier on Fox News yesterday, Obama said: “And what we’ve said is we need both sides to take steps to make sure that we can rebuild trust, and yesterday when there were riots by the Palestinians against a synagogue that had reopened, we condemned them in the same way because what we need right now is both sides to recognize that is in their interests to move this peace process forward” (emphasis added).

But did we really condemn the Palestinian violence? On March 16 (the day to which the president refers), the State Department spokesman had this to say: “As we said yesterday, we are concerned about statements that could potentially risk incitement because we recognize that there’s a great deal of tension in the region right now. Today, you had Hamas say ‘Call for a day of rage.’ This is irresponsible.” No use of the word condemn.

At the White House, Robert Gibbs had this to say: “Well, again, as I said earlier today and as I said last week when asked about this, there are actions that each side takes that hurt the trust needed to bring these two sides together. The State Department reiterated — or I will reiterate what the State Department said yesterday about the deep concern that we have around inflammatory rhetoric around the rededication of a synagogue in Jerusalem. That’s not helpful on that side of the ledger.” And later there was this exchange:

Q: You partially answered this, but Israel claims over the years it’s tried to protect holy sites — Christian, Muslim and Jewish holy sites. Have you ever discussed this with the Palestinians and asked them to refrain from attacks on either people’s holy sites?

MR. GIBBS: We have — I would say — I’m taking this a little bit broader — I would say the types of things that you’ve heard us and, quite frankly, administrations in the past discuss as unhelpful to moving this process along are — is any call for the incitement of violence. Again, I mentioned the State Department — reiterated the State Department’s guidance on what we believed was unhelpful rhetoric around the rededication of a synagogue in Jerusalem as a real-time example of the type of action and rhetoric that is not in any way productive and undermines the trust that’s needed for both of these sides to sit down and directly address their issues and move forward on peace.

So where has the U.S. “condemned” the Palestinian violence? Not in any public briefing or statement so far.

Even if we did hold the Palestinians to the same standard as we do Israel, is a housing announcement concerning the Israeli capital really equivalent to a call to violence? That’s the question being ignored. Israel and its supporters would find such a notion preposterous. The Obami do not. But we’ve yet to see — despite the president’s comments — that they are even willing to extend the same condemnation language to their Palestinian friends.

David Brooks says he’s out on the ledge, morose, and about to have a “Howard Beale” moment. Just last week he was telling us that Obama was a misunderstood moderate. Now he confesses that Obama is aiding and abetting unlawfulness of the worst kind. He explains:

Barack Obama campaigned offering a new era of sane government. And I believe he would do it if he had the chance. But he has been so sucked into the system that now he stands by while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi talks about passing health care via “deem and pass” — a tricky legislative device in which things get passed without members having the honor or the guts to stand up and vote for it.
Deem and pass? Are you kidding me? Is this what the Revolutionary War was fought for? Is this what the boys on Normandy beach were trying to defend? Is this where we thought we would end up when Obama was speaking so beautifully in Iowa or promising to put away childish things?

Not very moderate. Not even defensible. Brooks is left, as many of us are, blinking in disbelief:

It’s unbelievable that people even talk about this with a straight face. Do they really think the American people are going to stand for this? Do they think it will really fool anybody if a Democratic House member goes back to his district and says, “I didn’t vote for the bill. I just voted for the amendments.” Do they think all of America is insane? … It’s just Democrats wanting to pass a bill, any bill, and shredding anything they have to in order to get it done.

So I think we can agree that this is not moderate, not thoughtful, and not Burkean. (And it turns out that a perfectly creased pants leg was not a sign that “he’ll be a very good president.”) What we have learned is that Obama is willing to use radical means to defy the popular will and enact a massive expansion of government. Maybe the rubes understand Obama fairly well, after all. They figured out quite some time ago that the entire campaign message — change, hope, post-partisanship, nonideological, fiscally sober — was a ruse. And they understand how immoderate both his methods and his aims are.

I personally am not out on a ledge. (But then I never bought the whole Obama campaign whoop-de-do.) Should this pass, I have infinite faith that the American people will deliver a mortal electoral blow to those politicians who thought they could shred anything to get their way. And then bit by bit — or in one fell swoop — the elected replacements for the shredders will rip out ObamaCare. So there’s no reason to be morose. Elections are great corrective exercises, and one is just around the corner.

Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren writes in the New York Times to cool temperatures and to remind the Obama administration of where we stand. His language is diplomatic; his message, blunt. We’ll attempt to translate.

First, the explanation as to what occurred:

[A] mid-level official in the Interior Ministry announced an interim planning phase in the expansion of Ramat Shlomo, a northern Jerusalem neighborhood. While this discord was unfortunate, it was not a historic low point in United States-Israel relations; nor did I ever say that it was, contrary to some reports.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had no desire during a vice presidential visit to highlight longstanding differences between the United States and Israel on building on the other side of the 1949 armistice line that once divided Jerusalem. The prime minister repeatedly apologized for the timing of the announcement and pledged to prevent such embarrassing incidents from recurring. In reply, the Obama administration asked Israel to reaffirm its commitment to the peace process and to its bilateral relations with the United States. Israel is dedicated to both.

Undiplomatic translation: I’m not bringing up, as many news outlets reported, that Hillary Clinton is demanding a reversal of the housing announcement and some other, unnamed concessions. Because that’s not going to happen.

Then Oren sets out to put the dispute in context and disabuse Obama and other feckless lawmakers and analysts of the notion that the recent move was extraordinary. “That [Jerusalem] policy is not Mr. Netanyahu’s alone but was also that of former Prime Ministers Ehud Barak, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Golda Meir — in fact of every Israeli government going back to the city’s reunification in 1967. Consistently, Israel has held that Jerusalem should remain its undivided capital and that both Jews and Arabs have the right to build anywhere in the city.”

Undiplomatic translation: This is not unknown to the Obami, of course. They may be dim, but someone there knows this was nothing out of the ordinary and in keeping with Israeli policy and conduct for decades.

And as for Ramat Shlomo and other similar neighborhoods, Oren argues, “though on land incorporated into Israel in 1967, are home to nearly half of the city’s Jewish population. Isolated from Arab neighborhoods and within a couple of miles of downtown Jerusalem, these Jewish neighborhoods will surely remain a part of Israel after any peace agreement with the Palestinians. Israelis across the political spectrum are opposed to restrictions on building in these neighborhoods, and even more opposed to the idea of uprooting hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens.”

Undiplomatic translation: And this, Mr. Obama, is what you choose to have a fight over?

None of this, Oren reminds us, is a barrier to negotiating final-status issues in face-to-face negotiations, something the Palestinians have rejected.

Oren then delivers the real message to the Obami:

To achieve peace, Israel is asked to take monumental risks, including sacrificing land next to our major industrial areas and cities. Previous withdrawals, from Lebanon and Gaza, brought not peace but rather thousands of rockets raining down on our neighborhoods.

Though Israel will always ultimately rely on the courage of its own defense forces, America’s commitment to Israel’s security is essential to give Israelis the confidence to take risks for peace. Similarly, American-Israeli cooperation is vital to meeting the direst challenge facing both countries and the entire world: denying nuclear weapons to Iran.

The undiplomatic translation: This is no way to gain our cooperation.

Oren concludes by reciting Joe Biden’s words back to him — as if to remind his American allies that their actions conflict with their stated objectives. (”During his visit, Vice President Biden declared that support for Israel is ‘a fundamental national self-interest on the part of the United States’ and that America ‘has no better friend in the community of nations than Israel.’”)

Undiplomatic translation: So perhaps America should start acting like a devoted ally?

It is not every day that the Israeli ambassador has the opportunity, with a worldwide audience primed to listen, to restate the historical and geographic facts — which sadly don’t always make it into mainstream reporting. If there are sane voices within the administration, they will read this carefully, take Oren’s words to heart, and take up his suggestion: start to behave as if this relationship is the most important in the region and with some understanding of the events leading up to this point. Are the Obami up to it? Stay tuned, but I have my doubts.

In a perfectly crafted paragraph, Michael Gerson sums up where we are on health-care “reform” (more about that later):

The most visible Democratic domestic priority of the past 40 years must be smuggled into law, lest too many Americans notice. Politicians claiming the idealism of saints have adopted the tactics of burglars. Victory, if it comes, will seem less like a parade than a heist.

Why the need for the lawlessness? Because the president has failed to persuade the country of its merits, and he and Nancy Pelosi have their hands full trying to wrestle the final House Democrats to the mat.

The bill is in no meaningful sense “reform,” which was the premise of the entire undertaking. For example, it was going to slow the increase in premiums. But even the AP acknowledges, “Premiums are likely to keep going up even if the health care bill passes, experts say. If cost controls work as advertised, annual increases would level off with time. But don’t look for a rollback. Instead, the main reason premiums would be more affordable is that new government tax credits would help cover the cost for millions of people.” Hmm. This was precisely the point Sen. Lamar Alexander and Rep. Paul Ryan made at the health-care summit.

And what about budget neutrality or entitlement “reform”? Gerson says that’s not happening:

The problem here is not only accounting tricks and the assumption of unprecedented courage on the part of future Congresses when it comes to Medicare cuts — though these are bad enough. The main source of irresponsibility is that the revenue-gaining measures in the health bill — particularly Medicare cuts and taxing “Cadillac” health plans — would be used to create a new entitlement instead of repairing an existing one. …

The unfunded liability of America’s current entitlements is more than $100 trillion. Medicare will eventually require a massive infusion of cash under a congressional entitlement fix. Both the Congressional Budget Office and the Medicare actuary have pressed the point that Medicare savings can be used to pay future Medicare benefits or to finance new spending outside Medicare — not both. When the entitlement crisis arrives, Obama will have already spent much of the resources required to meet it, leaving growth-killing new taxes as the main remaining option.

So you can see why we’re down to parliamentary larceny. It’s probably what we should have expected from a bunch of Chicago pols. But it’s certainly not very hope-n-changey. It’s probably not even constitutional.

COMMENTARY contributor Ruth Wisse asks a marvelous question: “How about an Arab ‘Settlement Freeze’?” Her point is a cogent one:

Of the children of Abraham, the descendants of Ishmael currently occupy at least 800 times more land than descendants of Isaac. The 21 states of the Arab League routinely announce plans of building expansion. Saudi Arabia estimates that 555,000 housing units were built over the past several years. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced during a meeting in Baghdad last year that “Some 10,000 units will be built in each province [of Iraq] with 100 square meters per unit” to accommodate citizens whose housing needs have not been met for a long time. Egypt has established 10 new cities since 1996. They are Tenth of Ramadan, Sixth of October, Al Sadat, Al Shurouq, Al Obour, New Damietta, New Beni Sueif, New Assiut, New Luxor, and New Cairo.

In 2006 the Syrian Prime Minister, Mohammad Naji Atri, announced a new five-year development plan that aims to supply 687,000 housing units. Kuwait expects to have a demand for approximately 100,000 private housing units by 2010. Last year Jordan’s King Abdullah launched a National Housing Initiative, which aims to build 120,000 properties for low-income Jordanians.

And the litany of housing goes on, as does the history of Arab rejectionism, which seeks to displace the Jewish state — housing units and all — from the region. As Wisse argues, “It is unfortunate that Arabs obsess about building in Israel rather than aiming for the development of their own superabundant lands. But why should America encourage their hegemonic ambitions?”

So why focus on the tiny Jewish state and 5,000 units in the undefined “East Jerusalem”? (By the way, the capitalization of “East” now employed by every journalistic outfit on the planet is misleading. There is east or eastern Jerusalem; there is no legal entity “East Jerusalem.”) We return then to her query:

Why does the White House take issue with the construction of housing for Jewish citizens within the boundaries of their own country? The same White House raised no objection when Jordan recently began systematically stripping citizenship from thousands of its Palestinian citizens rather than providing new housing units for them in a land much larger than Israel.

Perhaps Israel has been at fault for not doggedly insisting on unconditional acceptance of its sovereign existence, and for not demanding that Arab rulers adhere to the U.N. Charter’s guarantee of “equal rights of . . . nations large and small.” Preposterous as they would have thought it, perhaps Israelis ought to have called for a freeze on Arab settlements to correspond to unreasonable Arab demands on them.

It is a measure of how cockeyed our thinking has become that there is only a single country in the region — the one that affords its Arab minority more civil liberties than in the surrounding Arab states — that must play “Mother-may-I?” when it comes to housing its own population. Now there’s an “affront.”

Lee Smith writes that Obama’s Israel bash-a-thon is precisely the wrong strategic move:

Of course, Washington shaming Israel will please the Arabs—even U.S. allies like Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Cairo, Egypt, that cheered on Jerusalem when it took on Iran’s assets Hezbollah and Hamas. Remember, the Arabs have been compelled by the American strong horse to swallow their pride for decades. But given that Arabs do not air their own dirty laundry for fear it will make them look weak, our public humiliation of an ally will earn us only contempt.

But here’s the most important thing: Even if you discount the centrality of shame and honor as operative principles in the Middle East, the Obama administration has blundered by jeopardizing not Israel’s stature but our own regional interests and the Pax Americana that has been ours over the last 35 years. Our position in the region depends on every actor there knowing that we back Israel to the hilt and that they are dependent on us. Sure, there are plenty of times we will not see eye-to-eye on things—differences that should be resolved in quiet consultations—but should any real distance open up between Washington and Jerusalem, that will send a message that the U.S.-backed order of the region is ready to be tested. And that’s exactly what the axis of resistance is seeing right now.

So the danger here is not that the nonexistent peace process will be imperiled but that this sends the wrong signal to Iran. We are not standing shoulder to shoulder with Israel but are moving toward a “containment” policy that imagines we can defend allies beneath our nuclear umbrella but not deprive the mullahs of nuclear weapons. In this light we see that “in rattling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cage, the Obama administration was warning Israel not even to contemplate an attack on Iran.” And the result, as we dump Israel and abandon efforts to stymie Iran’s ambitions, Smith says, is that “the American order of the region will be superseded by a new order in which we will play a secondary role at best. More likely, as Ahmadinejad and Assad say, it will mean a Middle East without American influence.”

If Smith is correct, then it is inaccurate to say that the last week is a dangerous distraction from our Iran policy. Rather, this is our Iran policy. Hobble and humiliate an ally, embolden adversaries, provide breathing space to the mullahs (did someone say something about sanctions at the end of 2009?), and hope that allowing the revolutionary Islamic state to acquire nuclear weapons will not come to be seen as the most dangerous foreign-policy calculation since the Munich Agreement.

How deliberate all this all is may be a matter of debate. What’s less in dispute is the inevitable result of a series of misguided moves by the Obama administration — each reinforcing the notion that we stand not with our allies or for our own national interests but merely for the proposition that conflict avoidance is the highest ideal. Obama intended to address “our standing in the world”. Little did we imagine where this was heading — a more innocuous and less reliable America, which is fast becoming an easier mark for despotic regimes.

In a must-read column, Yossi Klein Halevi makes a number of key observations. Running through them all is a single theme: the Obami grossly miscalculated the consequences when they staged a fight with Bibi Netanyahu.

First is the violence:

The return of menace to Jerusalem is not because a mid-level bureaucrat announced stage four of a seven-stage process in the eventual construction of 1,600 apartments in Ramat Shlomo, a Jewish neighborhood in northeast Jerusalem. … Why, then, the outbreak of violence now? Why Hamas’s “day of rage” over Jerusalem and the Palestinian Authority’s call to gather on the Temple Mount to “save” the Dome of the Rock from non-existent plans to build the Third Temple? Why the sudden outrage over rebuilding a synagogue, destroyed by the Jordanians in 1948, in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter, when dozens of synagogues and yeshivas have been built in the quarter without incident? The answer lies not in Jerusalem but in Washington. By placing the issue of building in Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem at the center of the peace process, President Obama has inadvertently challenged the Palestinians to do no less.

Second is the assumption that Bibi might be marginalized or toppled by an outcry from the Israeli public:

The popular assumption is that Obama is seeking to prove his resolve as a leader by getting tough with Israel. Given his ineffectiveness against Iran and his tendency to violate his own self-imposed deadlines for sanctions, the Israeli public is not likely to be impressed. Indeed, Israelis’ initial anger at Netanyahu has turned to anger against Obama. According to an Israel Radio poll on March 16, 62 percent of Israelis blame the Obama administration for the crisis, while 20 percent blame Netanyahu.

Third is the ill-conceived goal of preserving the proximity talks:

Now the administration is demanding that Israel negotiate over final status issues in proximity talks as a way of convincing the Palestinians to agree to those talks–as if Israelis would agree to discuss the future of Jerusalem when Palestinian leaders refuse to even sit with them.

How could the Obami have gotten so much so wrong? Well, “Obama could be guilty of such amateurishness was perhaps forgivable because he was, after all, an amateur.” Sheer incompetence cannot be underestimated as an explanation. Certainly sending political bully David Axelrod to beat up on Israel on the Sunday talk shows will go down as among the dumbest foreign-policy moves in the annals of Middle East diplomacy — which has more than its share of them.

Not without justification, some look beyond incompetence to Obama’s mouthing of  Palestinian victimology rhetoric. It’s not hard to conclude that Obama has fallen prey to “clientitis” — a syndrome usually reserved for State Department officials who become too closely identified with the country to which they are assigned.

In this case, Obama has become transfixed by the litany of Palestinian grievances, has come to share their conviction that Israel is the problem, and has failed to deliver the hard news — namely that they need to reject the “right of return to Greater Palestine,” renounce violence, normalize their society, and recognize Israel before there will be “peace.” In so doing he has helped plunge Israel into violence, soured our relations with Israel, and done his Palestinian clients no favors. As with so much regarding Obama, it’s the collision of incompetence and bad ideas that explains another administration debacle.