March 18, 2015

Is Anyone In Charge At The White House?

By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY 

What's gone wrong with the government in the past month? Just about everything, from the fundamental to the ridiculous.
Benjamin Netanyahu visited the U.S. to warn Congress about the dangers of a nuclear Iran. He spoke without the invitation of an irritated President Obama, who claimed he did not even watch the address on television.
Obama declined even to meet with the Israeli prime minister, announcing that it would have been improper for him to have such a meeting so close to Netanyahu's re-election bid.
But if Obama was so concerned about not influencing the Israeli elections, why, according to some accounts, is a Senate panel launching an investigation into whether Obama's State Department gave grant money to a nonprofit organization that sought to unseat Netanyahu with the help of former Obama campaign operatives?
Then, 47 Republican senators signed an unusual letter to the Iranian theocracy, reminding it that any agreement on Iran's nuclear program negotiated with the Obama administration would have to first clear Congress.
Obama shot back that the senators' letter was undue interference that aided the Iranians. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton agreed that the senators were either empowering Iranian hard-liners or sabotaging the diplomatic efforts of their own president. Secretary of State John Kerry concurred.
Still, the Senate may pass new sanctions against Iran if it feels that Obama has been too lax in its negotiations or usurped senatorial treaty oversight.
Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., bucked Obama and expressed doubt about administration concessions to the Iranians. Other Democrats could join him. But almost immediately after weighing in on Iran, Menendez found himself the target of a federal investigation into purported corruption.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is bogged down in another trademark Clinton scandal. Clinton never used a standard government email account while secretary. And rather than submit her actual emails to the State Department back in December, Clinton submitted 55,000 printed pages of emails — making it harder for those emails to be searched.
Apparently, Clinton also wished to decide which of her private-server communications to release to the government, but only when congressional investigators and watchdog groups demanded them after her tenure ended.
Clinton's implausible press conference last week only made things worse. She proved unable to explain her unusual behavior and seemed ignorant about how government email works and is secured.
Abroad, Syria, Iran and the Islamic State are battling for what's left of the Syrian-Iraqi borderlands after the we abruptly pulled out all our peacekeepers from Iraq. All are enemies of the U.S., but as they fight each other, Obama is negotiating with Iran over its efforts against the Islamic State.
The administration has also expressed a willingness to meet with Syria's Bashar al-Assad, after not long ago declaring Assad an illegitimate leader who should step down. Obama had issued red-line threats to Assad over the gassing of his own people.
Back home, two apparently inebriated Secret Service agents crashed their government car into a security barrier near the White House — in the midst of an active bomb investigation. Indeed, the agents may have crashed right through the crime scene.
This is after the Department of Homeland Security launched an investigation into the culture of the Secret Service after a 2012 scandal in which a dozen agents hired prostitutes during an alcohol-fueled night in Colombia.
Meanwhile, amid nightly demonstrations at Ferguson, Mo., a young demonstrator on parole allegedly shot two police officers. "Whoever fired those shots shouldn't detract from the issue," Obama editorialized. But trying to gun down a policeman is more than "detracting."
Obama's own Department of Justice recently issued a report indicating that the Ferguson Police Department routinely violates the rights of black citizens. But the DOJ also found Officer Darren Wilson's shooting of a charging Michael Brown justifiable, the incident that began the Ferguson "issue."
Was Obama worried about the wounded policemen "detracting" from the protestors' "hands up, don't shoot" allegations, which Attorney General Eric Holder's investigators, and a grand jury, already debunked?
This chaos has taken amid IRS and VA investigations, the Supreme Court's impending decision on ObamaCare and Saudi Arabia arranging to buy from South Korea nuclear expertise to counter Iran.
No one seems to be in charge at the White House. And that has terrified our supporters and emboldened our enemies, with another two years to go.