Mark Hemingway’s headline reads: “Obama says he won’t campaign for Dems who vote no on healthcare.” Yes, many of us are tempted to ask why the poor lackeys who vote “yes” don’t get the same promise. Obama has been chasing off local lawmakers of late when he appears in swing states. Creigh Deeds tried to keep his distance, but Bob McDonnell still won in Virginia, running against Obamaism. Chris Christie and Scott Brown didn’t mind Obama coming to their states — it seemed to juice up the Tea Party crowd as well as the traditional conservatives and independents.

Obama-Reid-Pelosi have many weapons in their arsenal. But the president’s popularity isn’t one of them these days. Remember, we are down to the final dozen or so votes. These are lawmakers who already realize that they may be dragged down by the Obama ship. The question now is not whether Obama can save them but whether they can save themselves by voting against ObamaCare. Oh, excuse me — that would be ”deeming not hereby ruled” the monstrous bill, which requires such parliamentary gymnastics to pass. (Can we say “pass”?)

The Obami’s decision to go after Israel in harsh terms, so unbecoming toward an ally, is bringing in a storm of criticism. As I and others are reporting, the criticism is proving to be bipartisan. Pennsylvania Rep. Christopher Carney, a Democrat, and Illinois Republican Rep. Mark Kirk are sending a joint letter to Obama telling him to recommit to a number of principles, including “the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, [under which] official United States policy recognizes Jerusalem as the undivided capital of the State of Israel.” Rep. Eliot Engel added his voice to those pro-Israel Democrats. (”We should not have a disproportionate response to Israel. We need to be careful and measured in our response, and I think we all have to take a step back.”) And Minority Whip Eric Cantor called Rahm Emanuel. Politico reports:

While he declined to quote Emanuel’s response, Cantor said he now believes the administration is capitalizing on a relatively minor diplomatic affront to redefine U.S. policy and force Israel to make new concessions about where it will build.
U.S. officials lambasted Israel for announcing the new construction of apartments for Jews in Jerusalem — without any warning — while Vice President Joe Biden was in Israel last week.

Israel apologized for the break in protocol but not for building. The White House has asked Israel to stop building in disputed East Jerusalem — a request that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected on Tuesday.

Cantor called the White House reaction a “disproportionate response” and said its call for a halt to the construction in East Jerusalem appears to be an “opportunistic move by an administration that wants to impose its view … onto our ally.”

These voices are welcome to those who wish to repair the U.S.-Israel relationship. But the problem is not simply the tone or the public nature of the criticism launched by the Obami. Former New York City Mayor and devout friend of Israel Ed Koch e-mails me: “It is very serious.  I hope all Jews understand the unforgivable pressures being brought on Israel.” And let’s hope all Americans do as well. The problem here is not simply the uncivil tone and bullying techniques but also the entire mindset and policy that seek to extract the most concessions possible from the Israeli government — or even topple it — as a negotiaiting gambit. It is of course a 180-degree reversal from the rather successful policy under George W. Bush, who correctly appreciated the fact that a close and fulsome U.S.-Israel relationship was essential to the “peace process.” And of course it is in keeping with our own national-security interests and our historic ties to the Jewish state.

If the Obami are surprised by the push back, that is only one more indication as to how out of touch they are — with the American people, with the realities of the Middle East, and with the impact that all of this will have on relations with other nations. In an administration with plenty of them, this ranks among the worst foreign-policy debacles.

The Obama administration seeks to recover from the stagnation it imposed on the peace process a year ago by doubling down on its strategy of making impossible demands on the Israelis, hoping that this time they will cave.

The administration thought it had discovered a way forward in the form of proximity talks, in which the U.S. would serve as mediator in indirect negotiations between the two sides, being that the Palestinians are refusing direct talks (this ongoing Palestinian refusal, of course, earns zero criticism from the White House).

But now the administration is attaching new demands to the commencement of the talks:

to reverse last week’s approval of 1,600 housing units in a disputed area of Jerusalem, make a substantial gesture toward the Palestinians, and publicly declare that all of the “core issues” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the status of Jerusalem, be included in upcoming talks.

It should be obvious, at this point, that Obama is trying to manufacture an immense political dilemma for Netanyahu by forcing him to choose between two crises — one with the United States should he accept the demands, the other with his coalition partners and the Israeli public should he reject them. For Netanyahu, this is a no-win situation. The only choice is between less damaging options.

Netanyahu should reject the new demands, because they are not made in good faith, they are a reversal of previous Obama commitments, and, most important, the proximity talks themselves are a trap.

Obama has demonstrated very clearly that he is not an “honest broker” — he is instead behaving as a lawyer for the Palestinians. The danger of proximity talks in which all the “core issues” of the conflict would be on the table is that the U.S. would act not as mediator but in tandem with the Palestinians to pressure Israel into making dangerous and unprecedented concessions. As Haaretz reported two weeks ago,

According to a senior official in the Palestinian Authority, the Obama administration has promised Abbas that if either side fails to live up to expectations, the United States will not conceal its disappointment, nor will it hesitate to take steps to remove the obstacle. In addition, the PA was promised that the United States would not be satisfied with playing the role of messenger. According to what the official read to me, the Obama administration will present its own proposals in an effort to bridge the gaps.

Obama has shown very clearly that, as on health care, he is personally passionate, emotionally invested, and possessed of the belief that he has the power to push through sweeping changes. The proximity talks would give Obama just the opening he needs to subject Netanyahu to an escalating series of demands and punishments — confronting him with the same dilemma he faces right now, only even more severe. Danger lies ahead.

Americans, it is said, don’t care about political procedure — how the House and Senate do things. That’s true. But they’re about to. If, indeed, Nancy Pelosi and Louise Slaughter and the Democrats actually attempt to declare the health-care bill law without its having been voted on, there is going to be a massive populist revolt. That’s not because Republicans will gin one up. It’s because there’s a cultural provenance here.

Everyone between the ages of 35 and 50 in this country probably saw, as a kid, this – I’m Just a Bill — a three-minute-long Saturday-morning cartoon that ran on ABC intermittently for several years. And everybody over the age of 50 probably has an atavistic memory of some “How a Bill Becomes Law” moment in a civics class (they don’t teach such irrelevant matters any longer, I gather). The single thing nonpolitical people may know about legislation is that Congress has to vote on it before the president signs it. The fundamental breach that is under discussion right now, even if it’s been done in minor ways before, is exactly the sort of political action that can explode outward in a million ways, and I suspect that even Nancy Pelosi is aware of the kind of damage she is going to inflict on herself and her own party if she attempts it. Which is why she is going to spend the rest of the week strong-arming Democratic House members any way she can, as Yuval Levin explores here. That, too, presents its own kind of peril, because there is no way the deals she has struck will remain hidden from view, and every one of them will be used as a weapon against her, the Democrat who was bribed, and the party as a whole.

There will be a lull right after President Obama signs it, as the media drop consideration of the controversy to discuss just how historic the historic nature of the historic legislation is, historically speaking, in historic terms … and then Congress will return home for the Easter recess on March 26, and all hell will break loose.

The Obama administration’s dramatic escalation of tensions with Israel, in the aftermath of Israel’s decision to begin new housing in East Jerusalem, is both puzzling and disturbing. John provides excellent background and analysis of the unfolding events here.

I would add to what he wrote by saying that this may be the latest manifestation of something we have seen before: the president’s tendency to treat our allies (such as Israel, Honduras, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Colombia) in a manner that strains relations while treating our adversaries (such as Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and China) in a way that that radiates irresolution.

Compare the Obama administration’s heated response to Israel, our best ally in the Middle East and one of our best friends in the world, with how Obama has treated Iran, a repressive regime that has a burning hatred for America (and Israel), actively supports terrorism, is trying to destabilize Iraq, is in breach of international laws, and is accelerating it nuclear enrichment program in order to build a nuclear weapon.

One would think it would be obvious where our loyalties should lie. Yet the Obama administration uses its most provocative and incendiary language against Israel. The U.S. “condemned” the announcement of the construction of new housing that is still years away. As Elliott Abrams put it, “The verb  ‘condemn’ is customarily reserved by U.S. officials for acts of murder and terrorism — not acts of housing.” Things have now traversed from rhetorical blasts to symbolic acts against the Jewish state, with the administration postponing Middle East envoy George Mitchell’s trip to the region. This step, in the words of the Associated Press, “appeared… to deepen one of the worst U.S.-Israeli feuds in memory.”

Toward Iran, on the other hand, Obama and his administration seem deferential, cautious, and hesitant, parsing every word in order not to offend — so much so that Obama was reluctant to speak out against the brutal crackdown we saw there in the aftermath of the fraudulent June 12 elections. He clearly wanted to maintain a dialogue with Iran’s theocratic dictatorship even at the expense of expressing solidarity with the freedom movement there.

It is as if Obama viewed Israel as a punching bag and Iran as a delicate porcelain doll.

What motivates such conduct is hard to determine. It is probably of a piece with Obama’s worldwide American apology tour, where he engaged in serial apologies for America for wrongs past and present, large and small, real and fictional. President Obama has repeatedly gone out of his way to disparage the nation he was elected to lead in the hopes of improving America’s image abroad. His effort has been an utter failure. Increasingly we are seen as a superpower that can be pushed around.

We saw in the Carter administration this pattern of undermining our allies and placating our adversaries. It didn’t work then; and it won’t work now.

Peter Wehner quotes Tom Ricks as writing that the liberation of Iraq was “the biggest mistake in the history of American foreign policy” and Joe Klein as writing that it was ”probably the biggest foreign policy mistake in American history.”

Well, they’re journalists, not historians, but really. How about:

1) The Embargo Act of 1807 that forbade foreign trade. In order to teach the high-handed British and French a lesson, we went to war with ourselves and blockaded our own ports. New England, deeply dependent on trade and shipping (we had the second largest merchant fleet in the world after Britain at that time) was economically devastated. Smuggling over the Canadian border became so commonplace that northern New England was declared to be in a state of insurrection. The British and French just laughed at us. When Napoleon seized American ships in French ports he said he was just helping enforce the embargo act.

2) In 1811 Congress killed the Bank of the United States, the prime borrowing mechanism of the federal government. The next year it declared war on the only power on earth capable of attacking the United States, Great Britain, raised soldiers’ pay and enlistment bonuses, and adjourned without figuring out how to pay for the war. By March 1813, there was not enough money in the treasury to pay government salaries, let alone fight a war, and only when the Secretary of the Treasury went hat in hand to Stephen Girard, the richest man in the country, to beg him to take most of a bond issue, did we raise enough money to carry on. In 1814 the British occupied and burned the nation’s capital.

3) In 1861, an American naval captain seized two Confederate agents off a British-flagged vessel. It was only when Prince Albert — already dying, it was his last good deed — cooled down Lord Palmerston and provided the means for a diplomatic climb down by the U.S. (which Lincoln gratefully grasped — “one war at a time,” he explained) did we avoid a war with Great Britain when we were already fighting for the life of the Union.

4) After World War I, with Europe devastated and the United States by far the strongest economic and financial power in the world, we withdrew and refused to take on the world leadership that only we could provide. But we insisted that the European powers pay back the money they had borrowed, which they could only do by extracting reparations from an already broken Germany. The Great Depression, the rise of the Nazis, and World War II were the result.

Lady Catherine Ashton is no Barack Obama, and she should be forgiven if her utterances may not generate the kind of wild adoration (adulation?!) that the U.S. president became accustomed to earning at each speech. But speeches are about the message and not only the charisma with which they are delivered, and Lady Ashton’s speech, yesterday, in Cairo, has so much substance that it deserves some comment.

There are three elements to her speech. First message: the nature and importance of the relation between Europe and the Arab world. Second message: the danger of Iran’s nuclear program. Third message: the importance and urgency of the peace process. Let’s dissect them by first quoting her words.

On relations between the EU and the Arab world, Ashton says:

I am especially pleased to be here at the headquarters of the Arab League. For Europe and the Arab world share a common history and, I believe, a common destiny. Our relations go back a long way. The footprints of your culture are scattered throughout Europe: literature and science, words and music, and of course our food.

No mention of human rights’ violations there — only a reference to orange water in Naples’ Pastiera cake and the sprinkle of Arabic in Sicilian dialect (but, presumably, not to the croissant, which was thus shaped to celebrate the Arab defeat at the Gates of Vienna). And yes, the footprint is truly scattered all over Europe: the watchtowers on the entire Mediterranean coast to warn of Arab marauders coming to kill, loot, plunder and enslave; the glorious-sounding names of battlefields like Poitiers and of naval battles like Lepanto; the early French literature of the Chanson de Roland — and many others. It all attests to conflict, war, clashes, and attempts to conquer, efface, subdue.

A common history, perhaps — but only to a certain extent. And hardly a common destiny. Like President Obama, then, Lady Ashton’s speech is an exercise in historical revisionism — papering over the inconvenient truth of the past as a way to appease our interlocutors, reminding them of a mythical time of idyllic friendship that never existed in order not to remind them of their present shortcomings: authoritarianism, social and economic injustice, human rights’ abuses, oppression of religious and ethnic minorities, gender apartheid, fomenting of hatred, condoning of terrorism, among other things. By ignoring the present and subverting the past, Lady Ashton has confirmed what the EU priorities are in the region — work with the powers that be, condone their errors as well as their horrors, ignore the broader regional context, and focus on one thing and one thing only: Israel.

This she does well, but not before she lists the perfunctory policy guidelines on Iran:

Our double track approach remains valid and we stand ready for dialogue. But the EU also fully supports the UN Security Council process on additional measures if, as is the case today, Iran continues to refuse to meet its international obligations. Our position is based on the firm belief that an Iran with nuclear weapons risks triggering a proliferation cascade throughout the Middle East. This is the last thing that this region needs.

Now that must have been exceptionally hard to pronounce. It almost sounds like a threat! How ominous, to have an EU high official (the highest one, in fact, when it comes to foreign policy) evoke the threat of a “proliferation cascade” throughout the Middle East.

So to ensure that no one became upset that the EU foreign-policy tsar was thundering, for a moment, against a Muslim nation without apologizing first, Lady Ashton threw in this closing line: “A nuclear weapons free Middle East remains a European goal.” That little reference to Israel gets everyone off the hook!

It seemed the perfectly seamless way to transition from the things she had to say pro forma and what she really wished to say:

The primary purpose of my visit is to show the continued importance that the European Union attaches to the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. This is a vital European interest and is central to the solution of other problems in the region.

Truly central: if you are a political prisoner languishing in an Egyptian prison and electric wires are about to be attached to your genitals for a bit of rough interrogation (surely not the one EU officials denounce on their trips to Cairo), what are the chances that you’ll feel better knowing the Palestinians will get a state? And what are the chances the police will forego this act of kindness as a result of Palestinian statehood?

Lady Ashton may not have the charisma of Barack Obama — but she can’t be so naïve as to believe that what is currently happening in Yemen is a byproduct of Palestinian-Israeli disputes; that piracy off the coast of Somalia would be called off at the announcement of a historic compromise; that al-Qaeda would lay down its weapons and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood would stop calling President Mubarak “Pharaoh” as soon as the Palestinian flag flies over the Noble Sanctuary. She must know. And so she says what she says — “central to the solution of other problems in the region” — because she is pandering to an audience of Arab autocrats.

From this we move on to the next step — one where Israeli wrongs are listed in excruciating detail and Israel’s government is slapped on the wrist repeatedly — its intentions are called into questions and its actions are blamed for lack of progress. But what of the Palestinians?

Much in the way of “the footprint of your culture” and other such rhetorical niceties, the share of responsibility the Palestinians get in the list of Lady Ashton’s no-no’s comes down to a gentle reminder to be more fraternal to one another. Just compare and contrast.

Premise of her comments on peacemaking:

Everyone has to make their contribution and take their responsibility. As the European Union we have a firm commitment to the security of Israel; and we stand up for a deal that delivers justice, freedom and dignity to the Palestinians.

The overall goal:

The parameters of a negotiated settlement are well known. A two-state solution with Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace and security.

So far, nothing too shocking. But then Ashton offers details to her vision of a negotiated settlement:

Our aim is a viable State of Palestine in the West Bank including East Jerusalem and the Gaza strip, on the basis of the 1967 lines. If there is to be a genuine peace a way must be found to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of Israel and Palestine. And we need a just solution of the refugee issue.

The EU is here reiterating its bias in favor of the Palestinian position. But there is more:

Recent Israeli decisions to build new housing units in East Jerusalem have endangered and undermined the tentative agreement to begin proximity talks. …

Settlements are illegal, constitute an obstacle to peace and threaten to make a two-state solution impossible. …

The decision to list cultural and religious sites based in the occupied Palestinian territory as Israeli is counter-productive. …

The blockade of Gaza is unacceptable. It has created enormous human suffering and greatly harms the potential to move forward.

So many details of Israeli mischief! But, again, what about the Palestinians?

The Palestinians too of course have responsibilities. First however I want to commend President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad for showing us that they can build the institutions of a future Palestinian State. But the Palestinians must get their house in order. Continued Palestinian divisions do not serve their interests. The political and physical separation between Gaza and the West Bank is dangerous. Palestinian reconciliation is more crucial than ever. The PLO must take its responsibilities in this regard, and face the challenge of renewal and reform.

Yes, that’s what is wrong with the Palestinian side of the equation. They are not fraternal enough to one another and the political and physical separation of Gaza and the West Bank is dangerous — though Ashton blamed Israel for it before!

For a brief period in the long history of EU-Israel relations, it looked like the EU had finally understood that to influence Israel it had to be friendlier to Israel — not just in words but also in deeds. That included being more understanding of Israeli concerns and more nuanced about the complexities and intricacies of the Arab-Israeli conflict, its history, and its challenges.

Lady Ashton has just made it abundantly clear that Europe has reverted to its old habits of appeasing Arab authoritarianism while chastising Israeli democracy.

In a different time, we would have dismissed it all as yet another example of European irrelevance and a guarantee that only the U.S. would really have a role in being the midwife of regional peace. But now, given the United States’s substantive and rhetorical posture vis-à-vis Israel, Lady Ashton’s speech should have Jerusalem worried. There aren’t any friends left around to shield Israel from this kind of European worldview — and so it might just stick.

Christians United for Israel is not usually in the business of issuing press releases. But these are no ordinary times. In a written statement, the group declares that it is “deeply concerned about the Obama Administration’s escalating rhetoric,” and continues:

CUFI concurs with statements made by Prime Minister Netanyahu, Defense Minister Barak and other Israeli leaders that this announcement was ill-timed.  And CUFI notes repeated press reports that Prime Minister Netanyahu neither knew about this announcement in advance nor hesitated to apologize for it after the fact.

We are therefore surprised that the Administration has chosen to continue to escalate a conflict with one of our closest allies that could have been quickly resolved.

Timing aside, the fact remains that the Israeli policy behind this announcement — to continue building in existing Jewish neighborhoods throughout Jerusalem — is not new.  When it comes to Israel’s bargaining position, nothing has changed.  It is therefore difficult to understand why this long-standing disagreement over policy — which has never been a barrier to negotiations with the Palestinians– is now the source of such tension with the US.

We remind the Administration that Israel has been a committed partner for peace and has taken repeated risks for peace in recent years.  We further note that the Netanyahu government has made important gestures to the Palestinians, including an unprecedented 10-month moratorium on West Bank settlement construction and repeated calls for the resumption of direct negotiations.  The Palestinians, on the other hand, continue to refuse direct negotiations.

So the  ADL and CUFI, Steve Israel and Eric Cantor, and a host of other organizations and politicians along the political spectrum are telling the Obami: bullying Israel will garner no support and quite a lot of domestic opposition. The administration may not be pro-Israel in any meaningful way, but clearly Americans are.

The good news is that George Mitchell is staying home rather than traveling to Israel today. If nothing, we’ve seen the danger in too much face time between the U.S. and Israel. The bad news is that the Obami are imposing three new conditions on Israel — they have the pretext, you see, after days of invented and exaggerated outrage. (1) Reverse the decision on Jerusalem housing units (what Israeli government could?). (2) Declare itself willing to discuss all “core issues” at the bargaining table, including the final status of Jerusalem (a demand that “could split Netanyahu’s fragile coalition government”). (3) Make a “substantial gesture” toward the Palestinians (because you can never humiliate Israel enough). One suspects the Obami have regime change — Israel’s — in mind.

The voices may now go quieter, but the behavior is the same — the Obami are seeking to corner Israel and demand of the Jewish state what it would never ask of the Palestinians. And they’d be delighted to force Netanyahu out in the process. As the Washington Post’s editors write:

American chastising of Israel invariably prompts still harsher rhetoric, and elevated demands, from Palestinian and other Arab leaders. Rather than join peace talks, Palestinians will now wait to see what unilateral Israeli steps Washington forces. Mr. Netanyahu already has made a couple of concessions in the past year, including declaring a partial moratorium on settlements. But on the question of Jerusalem, he is likely to dig in his heels — as would any other Israeli government. If the White House insists on a reversal of the settlement decision, or allows Palestinians to do so, it might land in the same corner from which it just extricated itself.

A larger question concerns Mr. Obama’s quickness to bludgeon the Israeli government. He is not the first president to do so; in fact, he is not even the first to be hard on Mr. Netanyahu. But tough tactics don’t always work: Last year Israelis rallied behind Mr. Netanyahu, while Mr. Obama’s poll ratings in Israel plunged to the single digits. The president is perceived by many Israelis as making unprecedented demands on their government while overlooking the intransigence of Palestinian and Arab leaders. If this episode reinforces that image, Mr. Obama will accomplish the opposite of what he intends.

The editors also note that this is where we came in over a year ago — a failed and rather mean-spirited effort to wring maximum concessions out of Israel. Well at least the curtain has been pulled back and we know just how these people operate.

The American Jewish community has indulged the Obami up until now. Devotion to a liberal president (he’s pro-choice and will give us health care!) has trumped other concerns. It’s been interpreted by the Obami as a green light. At next week’s AIPAC conference, Hillary Clinton will speak and there will be ample opportunity to correct the impression.

Maybe three conditions need to be imposed on the Obami: no more unilateral demands of Israel, an apology for the “condemnation” language, and an end to the “summoning” and the  scoldings. That should be the price of American Jews’ public and private support for Obama’s Israel policy — at the very least. It’s distressing that even that must be demanded.

Jeffrey Goldberg writes:

The Hurva Synagogue, which is in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, has been rebuilt and has been rededicated, and in response, Hamas has called for a “day of rage.” Why? I don’t know why. The Hurva Synagogue does not sit atop the Temple Mount; it’s not near the Temple Mount. Rumors that the rebuilding has affected the Temple Mount are being spread by people who want to create violence and death in the holy city.

But alas, Goldberg knows full well why Hamas is calling for violence and death: “The Hurva holds special meaning for Jews because it was destroyed in 1948 by the Arab Legion, which went on to expel the Jews from the Old City. The fact that Hamas — and even some in Fatah — are protesting this rededication means that we might still be at square one, which is to say, where Arafat was in 2000, when he denied the historical Jewish connection to Jerusalem.”  He warns that “this is about denying the right of Judaism to exist in its holiest city.”

Hmm, now where could the Palestinians have gotten the notion that they could engage in such behavior with impunity? Why do we suppose they haven’t a fear in the world that they might lose the adoring glances of the Obami and the security of “proximity talks,” whereby they avoid, as the Netanyahu government has offered, direct negotiations? Well it might have something to do with the perception that ”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 a virtual war against the Jewish state.”

Oh, but as Goldberg would explain, Hurva is completely different from an apartment complex! Oh really? Well, the housing complex at the center of the storm is not one that even Yasir Arafat would have made a claim for (before he revealed negotiations to be a sham and returned to the business of killing Jews). Who can say that the Palestinians have misread the situation? On the contrary, they can spot daylight when they see it. The State Department’s spokesman offered some tepid criticism of the Palestinians’ call to violence:

I would say that we also have some concerns today about the tensions regarding the rededication of a synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. And we are urging all parties to act responsibly and do whatever is necessary to remain calm. We’re deeply disturbed by statements made by several Palestinian officials mischaracterizing the event in question, which can only serve to heighten the tensions that we see. And we call upon Palestinian officials to put an end to such incitement.

But there was no “condemnation.” That kind of language and bully-boy tactics are reserved, of course, for Israel. The Palestinians may not be interested in peace, but they aren’t fools. They’ve figured out what’s fair game in the Obama era.

We started with the notion that health care was going to save money, be budget neutral, and be passed through a transparent process. Not one of these things is true about the current incarnation or the process. Indeed, “pass” is now a matter of great controversy. As the Wall Street Journal’s editors explain:

New York Democrat Louise Slaughter, who chairs the House Rules Committee, may insert what’s known as a “self-executing rule,” also known as a “hereby rule.” Under this amazing procedural ruse, the House would then vote only once on the reconciliation corrections, but not on the underlying Senate bill. If those reconciliation corrections pass, the self-executing rule would say that the Senate bill is presumptively approved by the House—even without a formal up-or-down vote on the actual words of the Senate bill.

But don’t they have to vote on the bill? Oh, pish-posh, let’s not get hung up on constitutional niceties. There’s historic legislation to be passed … er … “hereby ruled” through the House. Yes, it sure is a sign that the bill is so noxious that lawmakers have to pretend they aren’t voting for it in order to, well, vote for it. (”We have entered a political wonderland, where the rules are whatever Democrats say they are. Mrs. Pelosi and the White House are resorting to these abuses because their bill is so unpopular that a majority even of their own party doesn’t want to vote for it.”)

Even Nancy Pelosi is trying to keep things vague, suggesting it may not come to this. But it is coming to this, because a desperate president and the equally desperate Democratic leadership fear losing, so they resort to tricks, backroom deals, and parliamentary sleights of hand. That’s in large part how the bill got to be so unpopular. Nevertheless, the Democrats seem intent on doubling down, so why not load up on the procedural gimmicks? At some point — now would be as good a time as any — saner Democratic heads may prevail and wonder why their leaders must shred the Constitution in order to pass a bill that’s supposedly such an electoral winner for their side.

We are down to handfuls of House Democrats who will decide the fate of ObamaCare. One usually expects in these situations that House leaders have enough enticements and threats to garner the last few votes. But in this case, we’re talking about members in swing districts, the ones most at risk in November and the most wary of the Pelosi-Obama-Reid call to pass the liberals’ decades-old pipe dream of national health care. As John Fund notes, some of the usual tactics fall on deaf ears:

New York Democrat Mike McMahon was visited by a top SEIU official and told that he won’t get union funding if he votes “no.” Indeed, union representatives hinted they might look for a primary challenger or third-party candidate to run in his Staten Island district.

Such threats may not be as effective as liberal interest groups hope. Mr. McMahon’s district voted for John McCain last year and Democrats know any last-minute primary challenger to Mr. McMahon would likely lose to a Republican in the fall, even if he or she succeeded in toppling the incumbent in the Democratic primary. Threats by MoveOn.org and SEIU against many incumbents are also less than believable simply because the filing deadline to mount primary challenges has already passed for more than 40% of House seats. Meanwhile, the debate over health care has dragged on so long that many Democratic members are now clearly more worried about the impact on general election voters than on the party faithful.

So for now, the various Democratic whip counts look to be short of a majority and perilously close to the maximum number of defections. After all, the Democratic leadership is short on both substantive (do any wavering Democrats believe it’s deficit neutral?) and political arguments (these are the members with many Republicans and angry independents ready to pounce). This isn’t to say Pelosi can’t get there, but it sure is proving harder than many imagined when this all began. But then again, the bill is much worse than many imagined.

However it is that the Obami extract themselves from the current tempest with Israel, a bad taste will be left in the mouths of the administrations’ supporters, the American Jewish community, and Israel. The Obami have revealed themselves to be seriously lacking in both sensibility and understanding when it comes to the U.S.-Israel relationship, and to be in thrall to the Palestinian narrative. Bret Stephens explains the fallacy they’ve embraced:

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict isn’t territorial. It’s existential. Israelis are now broadly prepared to live with a Palestinian state along their borders. Palestinians are not yet willing to live with a Jewish state along theirs.

That should help explain why it is that in the past decade, two Israeli prime ministers—Ehud Barak in 2000 and Ehud Olmert in 2008—have put forward comprehensive peace offers to the Palestinians, and have twice been rebuffed. In both cases, the offers included the division of Jerusalem; in the latter case, it also included international jurisdiction over Jerusalem’s holy places and concessions on the subject of Palestinian refugees. Current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also offered direct peace talks. The Palestinians have countered by withdrawing to “proximity talks” mediated by the U.S.

And of course if it were about “settlements,” peace would have broken out before 1967. Moreover, as Stephens notes, if this were a land issue, the withdrawal from Gaza would have brought a cessation of hostilities, not an escalation. Dismissing the assurances given Israel by the Bush administration with regard to settlement activities, the Obami started a diplomatic war over an existing site within Jerusalem — one that would in any future deal remain in the Jewish state. The “affront” is an artificial one, a pretext for impressing the Obami’s audience in the “Muslim World.”

The lesson to be drawn by the Israelis is that the Obami don’t share a common understanding of the nature of the Palestinian conflict and are unpredictable partners, prone to fly off the handle when it suits their purposes. How in such a scenario does the Israeli government take “risks for peace”? And more to the point, why would the Israeli government rely on the U.S. when it comes to protecting the Jewish state against an existential threat from Iran? Once an ally proves unreliable, it’s every man for himself. That was precisely the opposite message the White House bullies no doubt intended to convey. But like so much else, they really didn’t think this through.

Perhaps a mini climb-down has begun by the Obami. After all, they encountered a “firestorm” of criticism from Jewish groups and a bipartisan selection (although many more Republicans) of elected officials and candidates. Rep. Steve Israel is the latest Democrat to weigh in, declaring: “Israel is a close friend and ally and our relationship is based on mutual interests and benefits. We need to reaffirm the American-Israeli relationship as Vice President Biden did at Tel Aviv University last week. The Administration, to the extent that it has disagreements with Israel on policy matters, should find way to do so in private and do what they can to defuse this situation.”

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand issued a more mild statement, but one expressing concern nevertheless: “The close bond between the United States and Israel remains unbreakable, and America will continue to show unyielding support for Israel’s security. While the timing of the East Jerusalem housing announcement was regrettable, it must not cloud the most critical foreign policy issue facing both counties — Iran’s nuclear threat. As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I am focused on strengthening international pressure on Iran’s regime to derail its pursuit of nuclear weapons.”

Republican Tom Price also issued a stern statement imploring Obama to stop “condemning our allies and started aggressively cracking down on those who sponsor terrorist groups and are ruthlessly pursuing nuclear weapons.”

So maybe someone in the administration took all that in and decided that allowing David Axelrod to play Chicago bully on the Sunday talk shows was not a good idea. As this report explains:

The Obama administration pledged Monday that Israel remained a US ally as congressional rivals rallied behind Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a feud over the construction of settlements. …

“Israel is a strategic ally of the US and will continue to be so,” State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters. “Our commitment to Israel’s security remains unshakeable.”

He also declined to comment on Netanyahu’s remarks to his Likud Party that construction would go ahead, saying that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was waiting for a “formal” reply to a tense telephone call on Friday.

“When she outlined what she thought appropriate actions would be to the prime minister, she asked for a response by the Israeli government. We wait for the response,” Crowley said.

Without prompting from reporters, Crowley criticized unnamed Palestinians for their remarks on Israel’s reopening of a landmark synagogue in Jerusalem’s walled Old City that had been destroyed in fighting 62 years ago.

Message received? Well, if so, then who’s running our Middle East policy and how did things escalate to this level? Certainly, a climb-down is preferable to continued escalation, but after a week of this, the Obami amateur hour leaves Israel, the Palestinians, Obama’s domestic supporters, the American Jewish community, and every nation looking on (some with horror, others with delight) baffled. If there is a game plan here or a set of permanent concerns and interests at play, it’s hard to discern. In the feckless and reckless Obama foreign policy, uncertainty is the order of the day. Allies should be forewarned: they may be on thin ice at any time. And our foes? Well, they must marvel that the U.S. is so cavalier with its friends and so willing to adopt the rhetoric and positions of its enemies. And for those nations on the fence, why would they have confidence in the U.S. administration? Being a “friend” of the U.S. is a dicey business these days.

The problem for Senate Democrats: likely voters prefer Republicans this year. “Republican Senate candidate Pat Toomey holds six-point lead over Senator Arlen Specter thanks to his strength with Republicans, likely voters and independents, according to a new poll.”

SEIU pollsters tell Democrats that their problems stem from the ”perception that they’ve turned into deal-making insiders on their path to achieving it.” The solution, naturally, is to use reconciliation to jam through the Cornhusker Kickback.

Meanwhile: “White House aides say deals such as in Nebraska will be allowed if they benefit more than one state.”

Rasmussen reports: “Democrats in Congress are vowing to pass their national health care plan with a vote in the House possible by the end of this week. But most voters still oppose the plan the same way they have for months. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 43% favor the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats, while 53% oppose it.”

Phil Klein wants to know: “If Obama refuses to look at public opinion polls, then how can he profess to know what the American people want? And if he doesn’t care about polls, then how come the White House is circulating polls on Capitol Hill asserting that support for health care legislation is rising?”

But really, the problem is mostly in swing districts. “By approximately 2-1 margins, voters in these districts oppose the current legislation, oppose a mandate to buy health insurance, believe the government can’t afford the legislation and believe that health care legislation is distracting attention from more important issues.” Well, yes, these would be the very same congressional districts with the wavering congressmen. The trick for the Democratic leadership is to get these members to disregard all available polling data.

Gary Bauer is a voice of moral clarity on this one: “It is obvious that in recent days the Obama Administration has manufactured a crisis with Israel and is doing everything it can to humiliate our ally and weaken the Israeli government on the eve of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. We shouldn’t lose sight of what set off the administration’s tirade. It was the on-going process of authorizing homes to be built in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel for its people.”

James Carafano tells the Obami to Focus! “Iran is problem #1 in the Middle East, but the Arab countries don’t want to face that problem so they whine, ‘We can’t do anything till you (White House) solve the Israeli-Palestinian issue first.’ The White House trots off Lemming-like to try to solve the problem and earn the president’s Nobel Prize.” Meanwhile, Iran’s nuclear program progresses.

Hmm … do you think a critical word would have been raised with David Axelrod at this National Jewish Democratic Council event? Word has it that it was postponed. Good idea.

J Street predictably loves the Israel-bashing.

The Orthodox Union joins the ADL and AIPAC in calling on the Obami “to move away from the kind of public statements it has directed at Israel over the past few days.  These statements have escalated tensions between the two governments, which the Obama Administration must now de-escalate.” The AJC issues a similar call.

Every time you think the Obama administration’s chutzpah has maxed out, you read another story that teaches you that this is a quality that should never be underestimated. According to the Daily Beast, senior aides are telling the press that once they are finished ramming an unpopular health-care package down a reluctant Congress’s throat, they will begin the same process with a raft of legislation aimed at further depressing the American economy and increasing Washington’s control of what will be left: cap-and-trade carbon laws aimed at reducing the threat of global warming.

Though last week some of the same sources were claiming that a long overdue immigration-reform package (a goal that George W. Bush tried and failed to achieve due to resistance from his own party) would be the next step, it makes sense that Obama would be more interested in cap-and-trade, since it reflects his own ideological predilections about increasing government power and deferring to international opinion.

Yet even the sympathetic Daily Beast can’t quite fathom how Obama thinks he will force-feed such a dubious proposal to Congress or the American public. As Richard Wolffe writes of the administration’s hubris: “Obama is even taking up climate change — an issue on which, after an anticlimactic summit in Copenhagen and a scandal that raised questions about whether advocates were skewing the research, the president would appear to be swimming entirely upstream. ‘We were never going to go small,’ said one senior Obama aide, referring to the Clinton strategy after his party’s defeat in the 1994 mid-term elections.”

How do we account for such a lack of realism on the part of the White House? The chances of passing cap-and-trade were already quite small even before the revelation of statistical fraud at the crucial Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University and of false claims made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Does the White House relish being linked to dubious research about melting glaciers in the Himalayas or misleading hockey-stick diagrams purporting to show temperature increases that aren’t there? Does Obama really want to spend the months before the midterm elections watching environmental extremists take center stage as cap-and-trade is debated in Congress? Is he willing to play Sancho Panza to Al Gore as the Nobel Peace Prize laureate jousts with windmills in what would be an obviously futile effort to get Democrats to go along? (Forget about the Republicans ever backing such legislation — especially if they get the opportunity to hand Obama another major defeat before November.)

Perhaps the “senior aides” dishing this story are just blowing smoke at the press, but if true, the idea that global warming is next for Obama shows just how divorced from political reality this administration has become.

NATO and the EU are trying to make their own luck in the antipiracy operations off of Somalia. In late February, almost unnoticed by the global media, the EU’s members agreed to take the fight to the pirates’ lairs ashore with a new charter to control Somali ports and to join NATO in intercepting “mother ships” before they have a chance to begin launching attacks. The EU plan for exerting control over Somali ports won’t be seen until later this month. But Danish destroyer HDMS Absalon, flagship of the current NATO task force, struck the first blow in the “early intercept” effort on February 28 when it sank a pirate mother ship shortly after its departure from a pirate haven ashore.

The NATO press release doesn’t specify which port the scuttled mother ship came from, but that factor — which pirate ports the antipiracy coalition tries to control — will almost certainly bring coalition forces into contact, and even confrontation, with the warring factions ashore. The mother ship’s port was probably north of Mogadishu; perhaps Harardhere, a well-known pirate hideout. Surveillance of that port or of the pirate ports in the northeastern region of Puntland would keep coalition forces out of the way of the fighting in the south, at least for now. But Somalia’s Islamist al-Shabaab insurgency seized the southern port of Kismayo in October 2009, partly because its leaders understand that if any faction is to consolidate central-government power in Somalia, doing so will entail gaining control of the ports.

A pitched confrontation is thus one concern; another is that the coalition will position itself, intentionally or otherwise, as a potential partner in pacifying and unifying Somalia — by choosing which faction to secure the ports for. We would presume today that the recognized Transitional Federal Government (TFG) would be favored in such a case. But the potential for open-ended mission creep is obvious and disquieting.

Moving the antipiracy fight ashore was always going to present these potential pitfalls. It would be very encouraging to see signs of a comprehensive plan in Washington for dealing with consequences and “next steps,” particularly with Iran supplying insurgents in both Somalia and nearby Yemen. Unfortunately, what emerged instead last week was another instance of the Obama administration’s peculiar haplessness.

In response to reports from the New York Times and other sources, and to seeming confirmation by Somalia’s president, Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, the State Department gave a special briefing on Friday to counter rumors that the U.S. is aiding the TFG in a prospective military campaign to retake the areas of Mogadishu controlled  by al-Shabaab. This could have been done without appearing to overemphasize — to a bizarre degree — how minor is the U.S. role in Somalia. But the State Department’s spokesmen earnestly disavowed, more than once, any intention to “Americanize the conflict”; swore to account for and audit all military assistance provided — indirectly, through the African Union peacekeeping force — to the TFG; and pointed out how very small, at $12 million, is the U.S. support to the TFG itself anyway.

It was a notably defensive performance. Fox’s Catherine Herridge tried to raise the issue of U.S. security interests in the region, given the ties between al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda in Yemen, but her question provoked only a reiteration of the intention not to “Americanize the conflict.”

The conflict, however, is already “Americanized,” in the sense of being a major factor in keeping U.S. military forces tied to the region. The chaos in Somalia is already the reason why piracy off its coast has become such a problem for global shipping. U.S. forces will be participating in the new, more preemptive operating profile of the coalition navies. And Somalia’s internal strife is a key vulnerability of our growing footprint in Yemen.

None of this implies that America must be secretly advising the TFG on military operations; but the disclaimers proffered by the State Department come off as reactionary and even perhaps a bit disingenuous. The Friday briefing was certainly a missed opportunity. Setting the record straight should involve more than a statement of what multinational processes we support: it should include a statement about the primacy of our own national interest in a unified Somalia that is not a haven for either pirates or terrorists.

The briefing did, however, send a signal about our posture. The Obama administration is so worried that people might think we’re actively involved in the problem and trying to apply leadership to it that its spokesmen seek to downplay our role. This cannot turn out well for a superpower — even a fading one. With our naval forces embarked on a preemptive antipiracy approach that will move the whole coalition a step closer to engagement ashore, that’s something we should have a very bad feeling about.

According to the Jerusalem Post, Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, convened his nation’s consuls in the country for an emergency briefing and told them that last week’s dispute, which began with the announcement of new apartments being built in East Jerusalem, has become the “worst crisis” between Israel and the U.S. since 1975.

Given the escalation of American attacks on Israel’s government from a variety of sources in the last few days, it’s hard to argue with Oren’s analysis. Israel was in the wrong to have let such an announcement be made while Biden was in the country, but the escalation of the incident from a minor kerfuffle to a genuine crisis seems to be a conscious decision on the part of the administration. After all, had Obama wanted to be truly even-handed between Israel and the Palestinians, he could have treated the Palestinian decision to honor a mass murderer during Biden’s visit as being every bit as insulting as the building of apartments in an existing Jewish neighborhood.

Others have already started to dissect the administration’s motivation. As John wrote, pique and a lack of caring about the consequences play a big role in this crisis. The willingness to push back so disproportionately against Israel, to single it out for opprobrium in a way not customary to this administration even in its treatment of open foes (think back to Obama’s equivocal reaction to the stolen election and repression of dissent in Iran last summer) should also force friends of the Jewish state to return to a question that was much discussed last summer: Why has Obama decided to downgrade relations with Israel?

In 2009, relations between Israel and the United States were primarily characterized by a ginned-up dispute about settlement construction. Not only did Washington choose to make more of an issue about settlements than previous administrations had, it also escalated the problem by specifically rejecting past agreements with Israel regarding construction in those places which the U.S. had acknowledged that Israel would keep even in the event of a far-reaching land-for-peace deal with the Palestinians. Even more troubling for the Israelis was a demand that construction of Jewish homes be halted in Jerusalem.

Though eventually, the Netanyahu government would give way and accept a temporary settlement freeze in the West Bank, it stood its ground on Jerusalem and won. By the end of the year, it appeared as though Obama had understood that his decision to test the Israelis was a failure. The hope that some in the White House had harbored about using their influence to topple the Netanyahu government had been unrealistic. Challenging Netanyahu on Jerusalem had strengthened his popularity. Distancing themselves from Israel had also not gotten the Palestinians to budge on making peace. Nor had it won the United States any extra goodwill in the Muslim world. It had just raised unreasonable expectations about Obama delivering Israel to them on a silver platter while motivating no one to greater efforts to cope with a real threat to both the United States and Israel: Iran’s nuclear program.

By the time of Biden’s visit last week, it had appeared that the administration had learned its lesson and was no longer placing any faith in the idea that pressure on Israel would do anyone any good. But the way they have gone off the deep end about an issue that was supposedly resolved last year makes you wonder how much Obama and Secretary of State Clinton have learned from their first year in office. Specifically, have they decided that this is an opportunity to make another push to get rid of Netanyahu by leveraging the dismay that Israelis feel about last week’s blunder?

The administration’s dispute with Netanyahu and with the mainstream pro-Israel community, which continues to support Israel’s democratically-elected government (as demonstrated by the statements from the Anti-Defamation League and the AIPAC condemning Obama’s overreaction), was never so much about boosting the non-existent chances for peace with the Palestinians as it was about changing the relationship between the two countries from one of close friendship to a more adversarial one. Hillary Clinton’s reported demands for more pointless Israeli concessions and the prospects for another year of non-action on Iranian nukes leave us with the same question we were asking a few months ago: When will Obama’s Jewish supporters face up to the fact that the man in the White House is no friend to the Jewish state?

Friends and colleagues John McCain and Joe Lieberman went to the floor of the U.S. Senate to discuss the Obama offensive against Israel. McCain kicked things off asking (from a rough transcript) if it really helps to “have public disparagement by the secretary of state, by the president’s political adviser on the Sunday shows,” and whether it wouldn’t be better to “lower the dialogue, talk quietly among friends, and work together towards the mutual goals that we share.” Lieberman responded:

[The U.S.-Israel relationship is] one of the strongest, most important, most steadfast bilateral alliances we have in the world because it is not based on the temporal, that is matters that come and go, or politics and diplomacy. It’s based on shared values, shared strategic interests in the world and unfortunately now on the fact that the United States and the Israelis are also targets of the Islamic extremists, the terrorists who threaten the security of so much of the world.

Lieberman then went on to explain that a “bureaucratic mistake” was allowed to become a “major, for the moment, source of division” between the U.S. and Israel. He continued that this is “an area of Jerusalem that is today mostly Jewish” and that while the Israeli government contends that Jews have the right to build and live anywhere in its eternal capital, “this particular part of Jerusalem is in most anybody’s vision of a possible peace settlement going to be part of Israel.”

Lieberman then questioned why the initial flap was allowed to continue on the Sunday talk shows. Singling out David Axelrod, he noted that calling it an “affront” serves nobody’s interests. From there, McCain said the escalation “may be giving the impression to the wrong people, the neighbors of Israel have stated time after time that they are bent on Israel’s extinction.” McCain then praised Hillary Clinton – who, he says, knows all of this too well. (Hmm, are there some Obami tensions to be exploited?) After some niceties about Clinton and Biden, Lieberman was not about to let the State Department off the hook, noting that the Friday news conference in which the Clinton-Bibi conversation was related to the public only served to “dredge up again something that had been calmed and ought to be calmed.” McCain then criticized the administration’s focus on a unilateral settlement freeze, and Lieberman concurred, noting that the focus should be on peace negotiations without preconditions and on the Iran nuclear threat. Lieberman concluded: “It’s time to lower our voices, get over the family feud between the U.S. and Israel. It just doesn’t serve anybody’s interest but out enemies.”

It was as compelling and informed a discussion on the subject as you’re going to hear in Washington. But the question remains: why did Obama feel compelled to do this, and who is really running foreign policy? Perhaps these are good subjects for congressional oversight hearings.

Tom Ricks is upset because I wrote this:

Those like Joe Klein and Tom Ricks, who claimed the Iraq war was “probably the biggest foreign policy mistake in American history” (Klein’s words) and “the biggest mistake in the history of American foreign policy” (Ricks’s words), were wrong. Ricks went so far as to say in 2009 that “I think staying in Iraq is immoral.”

Commenting on my post, Ricks went on to say, “The rest of my comment, of course, was that, ‘but I think leaving Iraq is even more immoral.’” Ricks then added this:

On the other hand, it is good for a journalist (or recent journalist, which is what I am) to be misrepresented on occasion, to remind one of how it feels. And I think we have an answer as to how intellectually honest Pete Wehner is. Or maybe he’ s just sloppy, because I recently wrote a piece for the New York Times about why I think we need to keep tens of thousands of troops in Iraq for many years to come.

All of this, you see, qualifies as a “world class bogus quote job.”

Here’s the problem for Mr. Ricks: he said precisely what I quote him as saying. He did in fact say, “staying in Iraq is immoral” — which is (to be generous) a really foolish statement to make. The fact that Ricks added that leaving Iraq is even more immoral doesn’t rectify his reckless use of words. In fact, I was happy to link to Ricks’s original comments since I’m sure people might wonder whether a recent journalist who professes knowledge of Iraq could say such a ridiculous thing. But he did.

If Tom Ricks wants to try to justify his comment that America’s presence in Iraq, which is an act of selflessness and great sacrifice by our nation, is “immoral,” he should do so. And if he wants to elaborate on why he believes our young men and women, who are fighting and dying for the liberation of the Iraqi people, are instruments of immorality — which is the logical conclusion of Ricks’s statement — then he should make that case, too. If he does, you can be sure I’ll respond to him again.

There is, of course, another alternative. Ricks could apologize for his words and admit that he made a mistake.

Washington loves 10-year projections like the CBO’s, which said the health-care bill will actually save $120 billion or so in the next decade.

Unfortunately, 10-year economic predictions are as worthless as 10-year meteorological ones, and for the same reason: too many variables interacting in too many unpredictable ways. The CBO might as well sacrifice a chicken and read its entrails to determine what things will look like 10 years out.

A good example of this is Social Security. Since the mid-1980s, Social Security has been running huge surpluses to build up a reserve to care for the baby boomers as they start to retire. The first baby boomers were born in 1946 and are already increasingly retiring. The surplus has been invested in special, non-marketable federal bonds.

In 2008 — only two years ago – the CBO predicted that the Social Security surplus would disappear in 2019, and the Treasury would have to start redeeming those bonds then. But the surplus is disappearing this year, not nine years from now, thanks to the recession, which has caused FICA revenues to fall as unemployment rose, and the number of people applying for Social Security rose, as well.

The CBO predicts that for fiscal 2010, Social Security will run a surplus of $92 billion. But that is an accounting illusion because the government will be paying it interest of $120 billion on the bonds held in the trust fund (not in cash, of course, but in still more federal IOUs). That means that the treasury will have to come up with real money — $28 billion — to make up the difference. It will do this by, of course, selling more bonds to the public.

If the economy comes roaring back, Social Security will go back into surplus for a few years. But as more and more baby boomers retire, it will soon go into permanent deficit (unless it is reformed), and the surplus will be gone by — according to the latest predictions — 2037.  That, of course, is a 28-year prediction. It would require reading the entrails of two chickens to come up with a prediction as reliable as that.

Obama keeps telling his fellow Democrats that ObamaCare will cure what ails them. But the facts — polls and the behavior of candidates – tell us otherwise.  As this reports explains (h/t Mark Hemingway): “Representative John Boccieri, Democrat of Ohio, whose vote on major health care legislation could be crucial to the outcome, will not be attending President Obama’s health care rally on Monday in Strongsville, Ohio, not far from Mr. Boccieri’s own district, a spokeswoman said.” We’ve seen this before, as Democrats in swing states steer clear of Obama. And given the polling data in Ohio, it isn’t surprising that a Democrat would want to evade the president. A Quinnipiac poll recently reported:

President Obama’s negative 44-52 percent job approval is down slightly from 45-50 percent November 12, led by a big drop among independent voters, who approve 38-57 percent, down from 45-49 percent in November. Republicans are negative 11-87 percent, while Democrats approve 81-13 percent. Ohio voters give Obama a negative 39-57 percent approval for handling the economy, and a negative 34-58 on his handling of health care. Voters approve 55-39 percent of Obama’s decision to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. Voters mostly disapprove 56-33 percent of the current health care reform plan, but say 53-44 percent that Obama and Congress should keep trying to pass reform legislation. “Given that President Obama carried the state with more than 51 percent of the vote, these numbers mean many Ohioans who were in his corner have now deserted him,” said [polling director Peter] Brown.

Democrats can avoid Obama on the stump, but there will be no avoiding the consequences of their votes — no matter how disguised or fuzzed up. Democrats, as Obama told us, need to vote up or down and live with the aftermath. So far it seems like those most at risk have good reason to stay as far from the president’s agenda as they can.

To add to John’s piece, there are probably a couple more layers of political foolishness here.

One is the timing. All the pro-Israel heavies are coming to D.C. in a few days for the AIPAC policy conference, the single most important event of the year for the pro-Israel community. And now Obama has set it up so that pretty much the only thing people are going to be talking about is this crisis — and not just talking, but planning how to push back.

He has also given Democrats in Congress yet another reason to distance themselves from the administration in the immediate runup to the health-care vote. You’d think he would have wanted still waters during this, of all weeks. But no: Laura Rozen reports that congressional Democrats are in the dark and wondering what the administration is up to — what the next steps are, what the end game is, what happens if Netanyahu cannot, or will not, meet Obama’s new demands, and so on. You know it’s bad when even an old peace-processor such as Aaron David Miller says about the administration, “The tree they’re up on this one is very tall.”

Walid Jumblatt is one of the wiliest and least predictable politicians in the Middle East. A canny survivor, he has led the tiny Druze community in Lebanon since the late 1970s. He is usually described as a warlord, but he is also the leader of his own political party, the Progressive Socialists. Over the years, he has been aligned both with and against Syria and has taken aid from both the Soviet Union and the United States. He is a charming host and raconteur who, as I discovered during a visit to his Beirut home last year with a group of American journalists, is not afraid of offering outspoken opinions on most subjects under the sun.

In 2007, for example, he publicly referred to Bashar al-Assad — the Syrian dictator and son of the previous Syrian dictator, Hafez al-Assad, who was most likely responsible for the assassination of Walid’s father, Kamal, in 1977 — as a “monkey, snake and a butcher.” Now Jumblatt is saying, in effect, oops, I didn’t mean it:

“In a moment of anger I said inappropriate and illogical comments against him (Assad). Can Syria overcome this page and open a new page? I don’t know,” he told al-Jazeera television.

This is one of the more notable attempts at a retraction in recent history, but, aside from its comic value, it does have some geopolitical significance. Jumblatt, as I mentioned, is known above all for being a survivor, and if he now feels compelled to distance himself from the March 14 coalition (something he has been doing to some degree since 2008) and to propitiate Bashar al-Assad, it is an indication that the balance of power in the Levant is shifting in Assad’s favor. That is bad news, indeed. Assad has shown no willingness to give up his support of terrorist groups (notably Hezbollah and Hamas) or to sever links with Iran. And why should he, when the Obama administration is trying to court him despite his unwillingness to change his ways?

Jumblatt knows which way the wind is blowing. This most sensitive of weather vanes indicates that American interests in the region are suffering serious setbacks. But the administration is probably too busy beating up on our most reliable ally in the area to notice.

Republican House Minority Whip Eric Cantor has released a blistering critique of the Obama anti-Israel gambit:

To say that I am deeply concerned with the irresponsible comments that the White House, Vice President, and the Secretary of State have made against Israel is an understatement. In an effort to ingratiate our country with the Arab world, this Administration has shown a troubling eagerness to undercut our allies and friends. Israel has always been committed to the peace process, including advocating for direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians, in effort to bring this conflict to an end. Unfortunately, the Palestinian Government continues to insist on indirect talks and slowing down the process. …

While it condemns Israel, the Administration continues to ignore a host of Palestinian provocations that undermine prospects for peace in the region. Where is the outrage when top Fatah officials call for riots on the Temple Mount? Why does the Palestinian Authority get a pass when it holds a ceremony glorifying the woman responsible for one of the deadliest terror attack in Israel’s history? Surely, the Administration’s double standard has set back the peace process. …

Israel continues to be a world leader in the fight against terrorism and speak out against the prospects of a nuclear Iran. For this Administration to treat our special relationship with Israel, one of our closest and most strategic Democratic allies, in this fashion is beyond irresponsible and jeopardizes America’s national security.

Minority Leader John Boehner, embellishing on a brief response over the weekend has weighed in as well:

The Administration’s decision to escalate its rhetoric following Vice President Biden’s visit to Israel is not merely irresponsible, it is an affront to the values and foundation of our long-term relationship with a close friend and ally. The Administration has demonstrated a repeated pattern since it took office:  while it makes concessions to countries acting contrary to U.S. national interests, it ignores or snubs the commitments, shared values and sacrifices of many of our country’s best allies. If the Administration wants to work toward resolving the conflict in the Middle East, it should focus its efforts on Iran’s behavior, including its pursuit of nuclear weapons, its state-sponsorship of terrorism, its crushing of domestic democratic forces, and the impact its behavior is having, not just on Israel, but also on the calculations of other countries in the region as well as on the credibility of international nonproliferation efforts.  House Republicans remain committed to our long-standing bilateral friendship with Israel, as well as to the commitments this country has made.

These statements are significant in that they put the Republican Congressional leadership squarely on the side of Israel supporters, including AIPAC and the ADL, which have objected strenuously to the misplaced priorities and bizarrely hostile treatment shown to our ally Israel. The focus will now be on the Democrats: do they defend the adminsitration or challenge it to clean up the mess made over the last few days?

It is not a good thing for support for Israel to break down on party lines. That has not been the case historically. As noted earlier, in 1991, three founders of the Republican Jewish Coalition — Max Fisher, George Klein, and Dick Fox — penned a letter to then President George H.W. Bush strongly protesting the cutoff of loan guarantees as a lever to get (yes, nearly two decades and not much has changed) Israel to knuckle under at the bargaining table (then it was Madrid). It is the bipartisan support for Israel in Congress and in the United States at large which has been critical to the maintainence of a robust and warm alliance between the two countries. That it is fraying now, when the most critical national-security threat to both (Iran’s nuclear ambitions) looms large, is especially troubling. And that, in the statements from pro-Israel Republicans, AIPAC, the ADL, and others, is what the administration is being asked to focus on. But then, they have no solution or game plan — it seems — on Iran. So beating up on Israel passes the time and excuses, in their own mind, the inactivity on that most critical issue.

A bipartisan coalition in support of Israel, in which stated principles trump partisan loyalty and political convenience, has been the cornerstone of the U.S.-Israel relationship. We are reminded now that for a president to enthusiastically lead, rather than decimate, that coalition is essential. What’s indispensible is a U.S.president who does more than mouth platitudes about our enduring relationship with the Jewish state. What is needed is a president who does not adopt the rhetoric and the bargaining posture of  intransigent Palestinians waiting for the U.S. to deliver Israel on a platter. Can our relationship survive without such a president? We are regrettably going to find out.