WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: The Agony of Obama’s Middle East Policy.

As Nouri al-Maliki agreed to step aside earlier this week, and even though the U.S. doesn’t have a lot of confidence (“muted enthusiasm”) in his replacement, President Obama’s reluctant re-engagement with Iraq continued. It has been agonizingly painful for the man who made opposition to the war in Iraq the cornerstone of his national political appeal and who trumpeted his withdrawal from Iraq as a mission accomplished to recommit U.S. forces to the country, but President Obama has had little choice.

With Maliki is gone, his choices get harder. The biggest problem is going to involve the fight against ISIS. So far, the administration’s strategy seems to have three main components: bomb ISIS when it goes on the offensive beyond its current holdings, arm the Kurds, and use the carrot of more aid to persuade the Baghdad government to do a somewhat less awful job of running the country—less discrimination against Sunnis, less politicization of the army.

The trouble is that all these strategies so far are half hearted—and hedged about with the typical hesitations, restrictions and cautionary measures that are the hallmark of this president’s foreign policy style. Bomb ISIS—but not too much. Help the Kurds—a little. Those policies are more likely to produce a stalemate than anything else, and at this point, a stalemate is a huge ISIS win. Every day ISIS controls huge chunks of territory is another day that hundreds and thousands of radicalized militants will see the ‘caliph’ as their leader. It is another day of collecting taxes, training fighters, teaching bearers of Western passports to carry the fight back into their home countries and otherwise building the legend of ISIS. It is also another day in which ISIS can go on slaughtering moderate Sunni opponents in Syria.

The core problem with President Obama’s strategy isn’t, in this case, the ‘split the difference’ approach that undermined his administration’s effectiveness in Afghanistan and elsewhere. It’s about substance. The only way to beat ISIS and bring about some kind of stability in the Middle East is to reach out to conservative Sunni forces who favor stability. In Iraq, this would be the tribal leaders and military figures responsible for the Anbar Awakening. In Syria and Lebanon it is a combination of the remnants of the sane wing of the Syrian opposition with the forces who support people like Hariri in Lebanon. Ultimately, it is about working with Saudi Arabia and the UAE to stabilize the Sunni world.

This is probably the safest and the most practical course for American policy, but it’s likely that a solid U.S. commitment to this strategy would alienate Iran.

Valerie Jarrett wouldn’t like that, so it won’t happen.

OVERREACH: Perry’s indictment backfires. “Unlike the New Jersey bridge scandal, where political wrongdoing was a given and the only question was the governor’s knowledge and complicity, Perry’s indictment is widely seen as a ridiculous political stunt. Most pundits, pols and voters concede that vowing to veto funding for a department unless Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg resigned after a drunk driving arrest is commendable, not illegal. Liberal commentators have decried the indictment while conservative media and even potential 2016 opponents have rallied to his side.”

IN EUROPE, NUCLEAR SABOTAGE? Who would want Europe more dependent on fossil fuels?

FROM 2012, BUT WORTH REPEATING, APPARENTLY: In Defense Of Men.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN FOR TODAY is about sexbots, the battle of the sexes, and Screwfly Solutions.

TIM CARNEY: Iraq, Ferguson, and the ‘libertarian moment.’

SALENA ZITO: The Democrats’ White-Voter Dilemma:

White male voters haven’t felt that the Democratic Party has their best interests at heart since Lyndon Johnson, the last Democrat to win a majority of their presidential votes. The further left the party pulls, the more each successive candidate or president loses white male support.

That is particularly true in the industrial Midwest, South and West. The only white males whom Democrats tend to attract are elites in urban areas — and, of course, in Hollywood.

Republicans have a minority problem and a woman problem. Yet, in midterm elections, minorities and women do not vote as much as white men, and they voted more Republican in 1994 and 2010. (They slipped back to Democrats in 2006.) Both former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and former President Bill Clinton recently expressed frustration over the lack of organized Democrats trying to win back the white working-class vote.

Dean is particularly dismayed that state legislative chambers have swung Republican in historical numbers. Gone are the majorities he helped to build as the Democrats’ national chairman, when he targeted values voters through ads on farm radio programs; Democrats hold majorities in only 40 of the nation’s 99 state legislative chambers, and they hold both legislative houses and governorships in only 13 states.

A well-regarded Democrat strategist privately acknowledges that the party probably will lose legislative control in Arkansas and Iowa in November.

Part of the problem for Democrats is that they used divisional politics and class warfare so well to suppress Republicans that it backfired and suppressed white males from turning out for them, too.

Remember when they said Obama was going to bring us together in a post-racial America? That he’d be kind of the Tiger Woods of Presidents? But, then, Tiger didn’t exactly live up to the hype either. . . .

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: How Mitch Daniels’ Purdue Is Reinventing The American University.

MICHAEL BARONE: Hillary Clinton not campaigning much for her party in 2014, unlike Richard Nixon in 1966.

THE WAY TO STOP THIS IS TO PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Rick Perry and the Democrats’ pattern of “lawfare” against rising Republicans. If the GOP doesn’t like it, it needs to ruin lives and careers just like the Democrats do. If it’s not willing to do that, then it can expect more of the same. The GOP would do better to respond like Dems, going after the attackers mercilessly and standing shoulder-to-shoulder regardless of the issue.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Our ‘Face in the Crowd.’ “Elia Kazan’s classic A Face in the Crowd is a good primer on Barack Obama’s rise and fall.”

PROF. JACOBSON: Indictment of Rick Perry uniting unlikely allies against prosecutorial abuse. “This contrived indictment may be the best political thing that’s ever happened to Rick Perry.”

Together with the gangster tactics employed against Scott Walker and his supporters in Wisconsin, this should also be a wakeup call to Republicans about what kind of a struggle they’re in.

I’M SO OLD, I CAN REMEMBER WHEN WIRED WAS A LIBERTARIAN PUBLICATION: Wired Magazine calls for Birth Panels. They’re all for “reproductive freedom,” as long as the right people are in charge of it.

THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE: The Woman Who Thinks Reducing the Male Population by 90 Percent Will Solve Everything. Plus, “International Castration Day.”

Also, the usual murderous lefty twaddle: “It’ll require the re-teaching of everyone—female and male—in classrooms, homes, through literature, media, art, and networks. It is a process that would take decades, generations, and perhaps even a few centuries. Nevertheless, these are things that should be done to forge a new and vastly superior world. . . . Children should be raised communally and by the state. The nuclear family model is a breeding ground of deceptions, mediocrities, treacheries, hypocrisy, and violence. It needs to be abolished. Bigotry, prejudice, and antiquated convictions are passed down through each generation.”

TOM MAGUIRE: A Character-Building Article On Nation-Building In Iraq.

I still think that if we’d gone ahead with the Oil Trust idea back in 2003, Iraqis would have had a much better reason to hang together. But despite backing not only from me, but from Hillary Clinton, Milton Friedman, and Michael Barone, it never happened. Too bad.

IN THE FRONT, BLOWING THE SHOT-IN-THE-BACK-WHILE-FLEEING NARRATIVE: Autopsy Shows Michael Brown Was Struck at Least 6 Times.

MAYBE I DO NEED TO PUT IN THAT GENERATOR: Video: Is the post-EPA regs power grid ready for a truly hard winter? “In order to comply with the new Obama era EPA regs, American Electric Power, which supplies a major portion of the electricity used on the east coast, will be closing almost one quarter of their coal fired plants between now and next June. This is because they were economically unable to come into compliance with the new regulations in the impossibly short window of opportunity offered by the EPA. This is going to reduce the total surge capacity available for some of our most densely populated areas just when we may get hit with weather related demand spikes beyond anyone’s control.”

“Under My Plan … Electricity Rates Would Necessarily Skyrocket.”