CLAUDIA ROSETT: Meet the Flimflam Man Behind Obama’s Foreign Policy ‘Narrative:’

When it comes to foreign policy, President Obama has spent more than seven years now living the dream. And I mean dream, as in fantasy — a trip to an alternate universe. Never mind the dangerous and in some cases deadly realities that increasingly beset the rest of the planet. For the White House, it’s been one glorious fiction after another. Russia was a “reset.” Libya was a success. So was the pivot to Asia. The tide of war is receding. There was a red line in Syria (until there wasn’t). The Iran nuclear program is now “exclusively peaceful.” America’s standing in the world is now — according to a White House tally of nameless surveys — higher than when Obama took office.

Remarkable. But don’t credit Obama alone for the creative talent behind these fictions. In a story just posted by The New York Times Magazine, veteran reporter David Samuels brings us a long, appalling and masterfully reported look behind the scenes at influential White House senior staffer Ben Rhodes, “The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign Policy Guru.” Rhodes, 38, serves as assistant to the president, deputy national security advisor for strategic communications and speechwriting, and oversees, as the White House web site tells us, “President Obama’s national security communications, speechwriting and global engagement.”

In a 2014 Firewall video, Bill Whittle told his viewers that if you feel like you’re being gaslighted by this administration, it’s no coincidence — you’re being gaslighted by this administration. With the clocking running out on Obama, nice of Rhodes to confirm he was one of its chief B.S. artists.