A CLASSIFIED MATTER AT THE WHITE HOUSE: SEMI-RETIRED PRESIDENT’S STAR-STUDDED GALAS.

Or to put it another way, world’s biggest celebrity much prefers hobnobbing with other superstar performers than actually doing the job he was hired to do by the American people. But then, it’s not like voters weren’t warned this would be the likely result.

Related: President Ash Carter Shows Bold Leadership While Obama Vacations.

YES, NEXT QUESTION: While Obama plays, the Defense Sec holds sway … Is Ash Carter picking up slack for the President?

Quite a damning series of juxtapositions at the new Heat Street Website, where Stephen Miller is credited for coining the “President Ash Carter” riff while our semi-retired president goofs it up during the last months as “Preezy of the United Steezy,” as NBC’s Jimmy Fallon dubbed him.

STEPHEN CARTER: The Next Supreme Court Justice Shouldn’t Be A Judge:

What difference does background make? Amar is concerned about diversity in several important senses. It’s notorious that every sitting justice attended either Yale or Harvard. But he’s also concerned for a lack of diversity in styles of argument. Those who have spent their careers on the bench tend to think that “judges are more right than they really are.” There are more ways to think about the Constitution than the ways we think about it in the cases. Part of the triumph of Brown v. Board of Education is the richness of its understanding of politics. Amar implies that this is in part because nobody on the Brown court had spent a career in the judiciary. On the other hand, he attributes John Roberts’s vote to uphold the Affordable Care Act in part to the chief justice’s extensive earlier experience in the intricacies of executive-branch policymaking, including four years in the White House counsel’s office.

There’s something very Jacksonian about this argument — and I refer not to Justice Robert Jackson, one of the heroes of Amar’s fine book, but to President Andrew Jackson, who campaigned against both the judiciary and the rule of lawyers. But although Jackson is in bad odor these days, on this point I think the seventh president was mostly right. He worried that judges were becoming an aristocracy in the new nation.

Amar doesn’t go quite so far, but perhaps he should. Both major parties are facing Jacksonian moments, with their bases believing — with reason, I would say — that their views are rarely reflected or even seriously solicited in the making of policy. More and more they see what goes on in the power centers they mistrust (Washington and Wall Street) as an ever-heavier burden of impositions. One needn’t share this opinion to see that it exists.

I note that there’s nothing in the Constitution requiring that Supreme Court justices be lawyers. I believe that in the Reagan Administration they considered appointing Thomas Sowell at one point. A presidential candidate wanting to ride the populist wave might want to announce that he/she would consider non-lawyers for the Court.

STEPHEN L. CARTER: Scalia’s Grave-Dancers Deserve a Harsh Verdict.

When the news broke Saturday that Justice Antonin Scalia had died at age 79, my Twitter feed began to fill with hate. Not disagreement or disrespect — actual hate. He was an ignorant waste of flesh, wrote one young fool. His death was the best news in decades, cheered another. Then there was the woman who just had to tell the world that she felt safer now than she had at the death of Osama bin Laden. And several people expressed the hope — the hope! — that Clarence Thomas would die next.

Thus we see the discursive toll of our depressing Supreme Court deathwatch. We’re actually rooting for people to die.

It’s unusual for a vacancy to occur in the midst of a presidential campaign, but it’s common as cake for activists to dream the hours away speculating on who’ll be next to go, and for journalists to count up the number of appointments they think the next president will get to make. Sometimes in their earnestness the activists of left and right do indeed sound as if they’re rooting for a death or two. They seem to think the justices whose votes enrage them deserve to go.

None of this is entirely new. My mentor, Justice Thurgood Marshall, didn’t die in harness, but I remember the deathwatch all the same. I was serving as one of his law clerks in 1980, the year Ronald Reagan was elected, and on election night, one of the television networks reported that Marshall had decided to quit the court, in order to give Jimmy Carter the opportunity to make an appointment. The report was false, of course, and Marshall was furious. Some in the building speculated that the story had been planted by activists hoping he would get the message and depart, clearing the way for a younger liberal voice — much as, in recent years, some on the left have openly if cruelly urged Ruth Bader Ginsburg to step down, as though she owes them some special fealty.

To the SJW crowd, everyone owes them special fealty. But read the whole thing.

Plus: “To trash the justices because we don’t like their votes (usually on a handful of issues) is to diminish the majesty of the court itself. The more we do it, the less reason there is for anybody to respect the justices when at last whichever side we’re on has a majority.” But, you know, one reason why people take such a ghoulish interest is because the Court has become so very important, and individual members so very important.

GEE, WHICH PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE BENEFITS FROM THIS ARTICLE? “We Keep Electing Outsiders; How’s That Working Out?”, Jonathan Allen asks at Roll Call:

Jimmy Carter kicked off the trend with a promise to restore honor to the White House. Ronald Reagan, the tough-talking movie star and California governor, vowed he’d get Washington’s spending and taxing under control. Bill Clinton, who had never worked in Washington, ran as the man from Hope. George W. Bush, despite being the son of a president, managed to come off as more Texan than political elite. Most recently, Barack Obama’s message and historic 2008 candidacy made it impossible for anyone to view him as an insider.

And yet, after electing this caravan of outsiders, voters still see Washington as a swamp of dysfunction, decadence and corruption. I readily admit I have more faith in our government and its leaders than most Americans do. But if you truly believe that Washington is getting worse, why keep electing the same kind of candidate?

If this sounds like an infomercial for Hillary Clinton, that’s likely not a coincidence. In December of 2009, NewsBusters spotted “another entry for the revolving door file: Politico’s Jonathan Allen…formerly of Congressional Quarterly and former Sen. Paul Sarbanes’ [D-MD] office, will take over as the top staffer at Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s DWS PAC,” Ken Shepherd wrote. “For his part, Allen, whose wife works as the communications director for freshman Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), found it an offer he couldn’t refuse.”

In February of 2010, when Allen returned to the Politico after admitting that he preferred pack journalism to working in a PAC, he sheepishly claimed:

I am a registered independent. My political views, like those of many Americans, are not neatly defined by anyone’s platform. I love the power of a good idea and get frustrated when I see the political system distorted by inertia or hypocrisy. I have voted for both Republicans and Democrats and even some third-party candidates. I am not by temperament a partisan or an ideologue. But there is no doubt that I have voted more often for Democrats, and when I decided to indulge my curiosity about life on the other side of the notebook it was most natural for me to align with them.

And judging by the above article, he’s still a Democrat operative, whether it’s with or without his byline.

STEVEN SPIELBERG’S PARANOID STYLE: Spielberg’s early movies depict the Carter administration gassing American citizens and covering up man’s first encounter with alien visitors, and FDR and his infamous “Top. Men.” similarly burying proof that God exists inside a warehouse that’s symbolic of the infinite Kafka-esque bureaucratic maze that was the New Deal. In sharp contrast, as Sonny Bunch writes in the Washington Post, in Bridge of Spies, Spielberg’s latest film, “Rather than the government being treated with suspicion by Spielberg, it’s the common folk who let the viewers down.”

And “the common folk” are happy to return the bad feelings the best way they know how: Spielberg and Tom Hanks’ latest film “grossed only $15.3 million its opening weekend,” John Nolte writes at Big Hollywood, despite “reviews weren’t just good, they were glowing” (including Nolte’s own take).

Perhaps with the growing threat of nuclear war in the Middle East, Bridge of Spies’ Cold War analogy hits a bit too close to home for viewers looking for escapism from the debacle created by Spielberg and Hanks-supported President Obama.

IS OBAMA AS BAD AS CARTER? NO, HE’S WORSE:

Conservatives have long attacked President Barack Obama by comparing him with Jimmy Carter. Obama seemed to be following in Carter’s footsteps, becoming a failure both at home and abroad. That comparison is mistaken, however. Obama is far worse than Carter.

“I think of Jimmy Carter as the good old days,” said former ambassador and American Enterprise Institute senior fellow John Bolton.

He’s in good company.

JIMMY CARTER DIAGNOSED WITH CANCER AFTER LIVER SURGERY: “Recent liver surgery revealed that I have cancer that now is in other parts of my body,” the 90 year old 39th president said in a statement. “I will be rearranging my schedule as necessary so I can undergo treatment by physicians at Emory Healthcare” in Georgia, the Washington Examiner reports. “A more complete public statement will be made when facts are known, possibly next week.”

STEPHEN L. CARTER: Hillary Clinton and the New Litmus Test.

You might have missed the news that John Paul Stevens, the retired U.S. Supreme Court justice, criticized Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton last week for her announcement that she would nominate to the court only individuals committed to overturning the 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission. Stevens doesn’t like the decision any more than she does — his dissent ran to 90 pages — but he likes litmus tests even less.

At a house party in Mason City, Iowa, a few days after offering her promise, Clinton doubled down: “I will do everything I can do to appoint Supreme Court justices who will protect the right to vote and not the right of billionaires to buy elections,” she said.

Stevens, in remarks last week at George Washington University, was unimpressed: “I’m not really sure that that’s wise either for the court or for a presidential candidate to make a litmus test on one particular decision. … I’m surprised at her statement.” The former justice added: “If I were running for president, I don’t think I would make such a litmus test, even though I think the case ought to be overruled.”

Stevens is right. I won’t trouble here to go into the reasons for my own longstanding opposition to litmus tests, other than to note that there is something decidedly peculiar about promising to place on the Supreme Court individuals who have already decided the cases to come before them.

Read the whole thing.

HAVEN’T THE VENEZUELAN PEOPLE SUFFERED ENOUGH? Ex-President Carter planning trip to Venezuela. But he did prop up Chavez in the early days. They don’t call him “history’s greatest monster” for nothing.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Obama Who?

Critics of the president are convinced that Barack Obama will do lasting damage to the U.S. I doubt it.

Obama came to power in the third year of large Democratic congressional majorities. In his first referendum, he lost the House and may soon lose the Senate; in other words, there followed a somewhat normal reaction against a majority party. Obama’s popularity rating is well below 50%, despite an obsequious media, and a brilliantly negative billion-dollar campaign that long ago turned Mitt Romney into a veritable elevator-using, equestrian-marrying, canine-hating monster.

In the second term, there is little of the Obama bully pulpit left. “Make no mistake about it” and “let me be perfectly clear” can incur caricature, not fainting. “Really,” “I’m not kidding,” “I’m serious,” “in point of fact,” and “I’m not making this up” often prove rhetoric hints that the opposite is true. When Obama warns about gridlock in Washington, the “same old tired politics,” the dangers of a tyrant or king in the White House, the need for an honest IRS, or the perils of government surveillance, these admonitions have tragically become a psychological tic to warn us about himself. Former jokes about siccing the IRS on his enemies, or using Predator drones to go after suitors of his daughters are as eerie as comedic. . . .

Americans are always up for a good class war. Obama gave them one, with all the talk of the “one percent”, “millionaires and billionaires”, and the “pay your fair share” boilerplate. But to be a good class warrior also requires the pretense of populism. Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich were at least not habitués of Martha’s Vineyard, did not make second homes out of tony golf courses, did not have the family jetting to Aspen and Costa del Sol to take time off with those who forgot when to quit their profiting. How can a president so rail at the 1% and yet so wish to play, vacation, and be among those who didn’t build their wealth?

The president’s signature achievement? He has established a precedent that the president can play all the golf he wishes without being caricatured as a distracted would-be aristocrat.

Jimmy Carter’s four years had short-term consequences — almost all negative — but little long-term damage. Obama’s eight years in theory should have far more lasting ramifications, given the huge debt, radical appointees, job-killing regulations, and dismal economy of the last five years. Yet we are learning that he is proving even a more inconsequential figure than was Carter. And so likewise in years to come, even his true believers will talk more of an iconic Barack Obama before and after he was president — but rarely during.

Let’s hope.

HUGH HEWITT: President Obama’s Closing Act: An Epic Collapse.

The president of course has his passionate supporters. These are the same people that spent last Tuesdaynight declaring him the winner of his second meeting with Mitt Romney, and Wednesday and Thursday trying to infuse the word “binder” with game-changing significance.

They are the same people who spent Friday denying that “not optimal” was not a big deal.

“Binder” –big deal. “Not optimal” –no deal at all. That’s the state of the Obama campaign: A nearly Orwellian effort at making some words matter and others disappear while facts are pushed aside It hasn’t worked. It won’t work..

Mitt Romney by contrast followed two very strong debate showings with a wonderful set of remarks at the Al Smith dinner, the third time in two weeks that he has reassured those just tuning into the presidential campaign that he will be a steady and reliable force for good in the Oval Office.

Romney was ready for his close up. This is the primary reasion behind his surge.

Related: How Romney’s Polling:

According to the latest Gallup survey, Mitt Romney is polling 52% of likely voters. At this point in the race he is ahead of:

Where Jimmy Carter was in 1976 (47%)

Where Ronald Reagan was in 1980 (39% — Carter was six points up)

Where George H.W. Bush was in 1988 (50%)

Where Bill Clinton was in 1992 (40%)

Where George W. Bush was in 2000 (48%)

Where Barack Obama was in 2008 (49%)

Nice polling, kid. Don’t get cocky. It only matters if people show up.

THE HILL: Romney Surges Past Obama In Second Poll. “Mitt Romney has overtaken President Obama in a Public Policy Polling survey released on Tuesday. Romney won 49 percent support from likely voters in the poll, compared to 47 percent for Obama. It’s the first time all year Romney has led in the poll, which was conducted on behalf of the liberal Daily Kos website and the Service Employees International Union. Obama led 49-45 percent in the group’s previous poll, conducted before last week’s debate.”

UPDATE: Romney Ahead in Colorado, North Carolina, Ohio. And pulling close in Pennsylvania.

Also: Obama loses 
lead on key 
voter issues: economy, national security. “The left, as I suggested, may soon (if not before the election, than certainly after if he loses) reach the point in which Obama is trashed to save liberalism. It is not, the left tells us, the Keynesian record of failure that was to blame for the debate wipeout; rather it was Obama’s cruddy performance. It’s not that liberalism lacks a reform agenda that is both feasible and politically popular, you see. No, the problem was that Obama didn’t shout ‘Liar!’ loudly enough. Given a choice between casting off their false idol and giving up the cult of liberalism, there is no competition. Liberals will have no compunction about dumping Obama.”

MORE: IowaHawk: White House Scientists Struggle to Contain Outbreak of Scrutonium. “Engaged a relentless battle against time and fatigue, a select group of message scientists assembled by the White House’s Center for Narrative Control say they will take “all steps necessary” to contain a recent outbreak of scrutonium, a deadly poll-eating supervirus that attacks the immuno-hope system, leaving victims vulnerable to material facts.”

Related: Obama cultists’ crack-up.

Also: Washington Post Joins “Poll Truthers.” “Exit Question: Is this sample Pew’s attempt to correct itself pre-election or will we see a new poll just before the day re-skewed to try and create the Obama comeback?”

STILL MORE: Fine, enjoy the meltdown — but don’t get cocky!

But reader William Miller emails: “I ran the Chicago Marathon this past weekend, which went through several different neighborhoods in and around downtown Chicago. I did not see one pro-Obama sign. I did see a few Romney signs though. I know it wasn’t a political event, but I assumed that I would be overwhelmed by all of the Obama supporters that the press has been telling me about especially on his home turf.”

Maybe he just isn’t cool any more, and people are embarrassed? Kind of like Jimmy Carter, at the end.

MORE STILL: Reader Carey Cline writes:

I live in an intown Atlanta neighborhood that is very near Emory University, the CDC and a large conservative Jewish synagogue. So my yard is a little island of conservatism in a vast sea of liberal moonbats.

In 2008 every yard (except mine) it seemed had the requisite Obama yard sign. A yeti would have been an easier find than a McCain/Palin sign or sticker.

This morning on my way to work I counted six Romney/Ryan signs….If Obama is losing my neighborhood….oh you know the rest….

Well, don’t get cocky, kids.

CONN CARROLL: Obama’s Alternative Middle East Reality.

President Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, hit the Sunday talk show circuit yesterday to defend the administration’s Middle East policy in light of a week’s worth of spreading violence and the first murder of a U.S. ambassador since Jimmy Carter was president. In the course of defending Obama, Rice claimed: 1) that the security at the Benghazi consulate was adequate; 2) the attacks on the Benghazi consulate were not pre-planned; and 3) all of this violence is due solely to one 11-minute video on YouTube. All three of these positions are preposterous.

First, as the BBC reported this weekend, the Obama administration purposefully chose to provide substandard security at the Benghazi consulate. “US embassies and consulates in areas of the world where they are deemed liable to attack are usually offered a formal security contract called a Worldwide Protective Services Agreement … But sources have told the BBC that on the advice of a US diplomatic regional security officer, the mission in Benghazi was not given the full contract … Instead, the US consulate was guarded externally by a force of local Libyan militia, many of whom reportedly put down their weapons and fled once the mission came under concerted attack.”

Second, Libya President Mohamed Yousef El-Magariaf directly contradicted Rice on CBS’s , Face the Nation, telling Bob Schieffer, “It was planned, definitely. It was planned by foreigners, by people who entered the country a few months ago. And they were planning this criminal act since their arrival.”

Finally, no one outside the White House believes a single video caused the violence. Liberal commentator and Tufts University international politics professor Dan Drezner has called Obama’s decision to blame the YouTube clip a “radically incomplete and dishonest answer.” As The New York Times Ross Douthat points out, the riots have far more to do with internal power politics.

The reality is that Obama has failed internationally for the same reason he has failed at home: arrogance.

Read the whole thing.

MATTHEW CONTINETTI: Hollywood’s White House:

John Carter, Battleship, The Dictator, Dark Shadows—add Barack Obama’s campaign to the list of Hollywood bombs shelling the 2012 summer box office. Like them, Obama for America is in the red, and reviews are not positive.

Obama’s reelection is the ultimate studio production, a sort of political It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World that costs millions, features a cast of thousands, and stars some of the biggest names of the day. However, like all screwball comedies, things are not going as the protagonist intends. The entertainment industry has captured Obama’s presidency, and shifted the national agenda onto terrain familiar to California and New York liberals, but unfavorable to the independent voters who will decide 2012.

Having alienated practically all of business and Wall Street, the president has come to rely on film, fashion, and music donors. He raffles off tickets to dinners with George Clooney and Sarah Jessica Parker, and backstage passes to see Marc Anthony. Dreamworks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg has given $2 million to the Obama super PAC Priorities USA, even as his studio is under SEC investigation for alleged bribery of Chinese officials.

The most recent list of contributors to the Democratic National Committee resembles a promo for a bad episode of Hollywood Squares: “Kirk Douglas, Billy Crystal, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black, Tom Hanks, Salma Hayek, and Burt Bacharach.” That last name is worth mulling. To paraphrase another million-dollar Hollywood donor to Obama’s super PAC, here is a new rule: When one relies on the composer of “What’s New Pussycat” for money, it may be time to say a little prayer for one’s campaign.

Read the whole thing.

OBAMA APPROVAL now worse than Jimmy Carter’s. Well, he’s a worse President than Jimmy Carter, which took some doing.

Related: The Fervor Behind Dumping Obama.

HE THINKS THIS IS SOMETHING TO BRAG ABOUT: Jimmy Carter: ‘We never dropped a bomb. We never fired a bullet. We never went to war.’ But, of course, his craven and inept example encouraged all our future problems in the region, where a firm response would have quashed them. If only he’d been as tough with hate-filled terrorists as with marauding cats.

TEA PARTY GROUP TO HOFFA: Resign!

After Teamsters union president Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. called for a “war” against Republicans and tea partiers on Monday, one tea party group is calling for the union leader to resign.

“Calls to violence can never be acceptable in this civil society,” the Rockford, Illinois tea party group said in a statement. “Hoffa’s remarks were made in an introduction to Obama speaking to Auto Workers and Unions in Detroit and this sort of angry, hateful, call to violence should be repudiated by the President with a call from the President to ask Hoffa to resign his very public position of influence.”

While warming up a Labor Day crowed in Detroit before a speech by President Obama, Hoffa Jr. said unions need to pick a fight with tea partiers and congressional Republicans.

“President Obama, this is your army,” Hoffa Jr. declared. “We are ready to march. Let’s take these sons of bitches out and take America back to where America we belong.”

The Rockford tea party called Hoffa’s comments “incendiary and dangerous.”

A far cry from the Hope And Change of 2008, isn’t it?

UPDATE: “Somebody didn’t get the memo.”

Plus, via email, this from the St. Louis Tea Party:

St. Louis, MO– The St. Louis Tea Party Coalition regrets the unfortunate call to violence by Teamster president Jimmy Hoffa. We believe that the political process–not terrorist tactics–will restore American exceptionalism. We expect the men and women of the Teamsters to do the right thing and remove Mr. Hoffa from office.

On Labor Day, in remarks introducing the President of the United States, Hoffa effectively declared civil war on citizens who support the Tea Party movement, saying, “The war on workers, and you see it everywhere, it [sic] is the Tea Party . . .President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let’s take these son of a bitches [sic] out . . .”

“This is sad,” said St. Louis Tea Party Coalition co-founder Bill Hennessy. “We went through this in August 2009 with [AFL-CIO President John] Sweeney’s letter to the rank-and-file to ‘get in their faces,’ and the White House told supporters to punch us back twice as hard. By contrast, we’ve held dozens of peaceful events. We just wish people like Hoffa would let us exercise the First Amendment in peace and safety.”

In sharp contrast to Hoffa’s call to violence, St. Louis Tea Party Coalition is launching its 12-month “The After Party” campaign on September 15 at 7:00 pm at Crowne Plaza Hotel in Clayton. The stated purpose of The After Party is to restore the human fabric of society. For more information about The After Party visit http://stlouisteaparty.com/category/the-after-party/.

The Teamsters aren’t so big about “human fabric.” More like cement shoes . . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Labor Leader Calls For War On Republicans. “I’ve been saying since before the 2008 election that Obama’s nearest historical analogy wasn’t Jimmy Carter or FDR, but Juan Domingo Perón.”

MORE: A reader emails: “I’ll bet there are a lot more Tea Party supporters among the rank and file than Hoffa thinks.” He’ll learn.

MORE STILL: Ann Althouse:

I realize “let’s take these sons of bitches out” can be interpreted to mean let’s vote these terrible people out of office. But “take them out” is not an idiomatic expression that corresponds to “vote them out.” Take them out? Maybe that’s not the phrase he intended to use, but if it was unintended, it was still a gaffe. A revealing gaffe. Unless you’re speaking in a positive way — referring to taking someone out on a date, for example — “take them out” is a violent command. With “sons of bitches” right there, it’s unmistakably violent. Now, you can say it’s only metaphorical, and all Hoffa really wants is to oust these people from office.

But it was only last January that Obama and many other Democrats were saying that violent metaphors, including a simple target on a map, were dangerous incitements for the unstable irrational folk out there.

Yeah, but it’s probably racist to point that out, or something. Plus, a reader emails: “I find Hoffa’s remarks reassuring. They’re backed into a corner and lashing out. It’s pure desperation. It’s over for the radical left. But……it’s gonna get ugly. Thugs…..”

Yeah, it’s Wisconsin writ large. They’re losing, and they’re losing ugly. Luckily, it’s hard to get good goons these days.

STILL MORE: Desperate Times In Detroit. “Did Obama disapprove of Hoffa’s incendiary message? Apparently not; he mentioned Hoffa only to say that he is proud of him. But, what the heck: he sat through ‘God DAMN America’ for twenty years without protest, so I guess he can put up with Tea Party ‘sons of bitches,’ too. . . . In the meantime, my suggestion to any Republican is that he respond to Obama’s challenge by saying, ‘We’re not going to double down on failure.'”

FINALLY: “President Obama’s Labor Day speech was divisive, partisan, and decidedly inappropriate for a national holiday meant to unite Americans. But the president’s choice of Motown as a backdrop was meant to highlight what appears to be a national success story: the renewal of Detroit in the wake of his administration’s managed bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler. In truth, however, Detroit represents the greatest failure of this president.”

DANA MILBANK: “A familiar air of indecision preceded President Obama’s pep talk to the nation.”

Plus this: “It’s not exactly fair to blame Obama for the rout: Almost certainly, the markets ignored him. And that’s the problem: The most powerful man in the world seems strangely powerless, and irresolute, as larger forces bring down the country and his presidency. . . . That is the enduring mystery of Obama’s presidency. He delivered his statement on the economy beneath a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, but that was as close as he came to forceful leadership.” It’s as if, in some sort of national spasm of carelessness and self-deceit, we elected a guy entirely unqualified by experience or personal characteristics to the single most important office in the land, to serve during a period of unusual troubles that he was not equipped to address.

Nice to see that even the press is starting to notice.

UPDATE: Obama In The Headlights.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Is Obama Smart?

Plus: Obama’s penchant for speeches now sounding hollower by the word. I’m definitely sensing a shift in the tone here. . . .

Hey, they once loved Jimmy Carter, too. Until they didn’t. But, as is worth repeating, at this point a Carter rerun is a best-case scenario.

MORE: Reader Robert Burnham emails that an MSM preference cascade may be underway:

I think this week and last will be seen as when Obama lost the MSM. His inexperience and political incompetence have become too obvious to ignore, even for them. He’s become a liability to the Party. They won’t turn on him viciously because they invested so heavily in him before. But we’ll see a chilling of tone in regard to him, and simultaneously a warmer response toward Democrats who appear more electable.

Another matter is that Democrats looking farther down the road may actually not want to jump into 2012, figuring that a primary fight against a sitting president will be fratricidal to the Party — and perhaps also that a political reversal next year has become highly probable anyway.

Yeah. Unless there’s a grudge involved.

ROGER KIMBALL: Thank You, President Obama: “Just a couple of years in that big house in Washington and you and your spendthrift colleagues have managed to blight the most productive economy the world has ever seen. Thank you Mr. President! . . . In the space of two years, you have done more damage to this economy — which means the future not only of this country but the rest of what you would disdain to call the civilized world — than any President in history. You are a poor man’s Jimmy Carter, a midget Herbert Hoover, a disaster for this country and the world.”

THE RETURN OF STAGFLATION: Obama’s Carter-era policies bring back Carter-era problems. As I keep saying, a Carter-rerun is a best-case scenario.

And note this:

One possible difference is that interest rates were extremely high during the Carter years. Right now, real interest rates are close to zero. Banks have plenty of reserves but they still aren’t lending. Banks won’t lend if it isn’t profitable to do so. Businesses won’t invest if the expected benefit doesn’t exceed the risk. That has to do with uncertainty in the system, and in view of fact that when interest rates are nearly zero, there isn’t much wiggle room there to change the calculus.

Today’s uncertainty runs the gamut from monetary to fiscal policy. Uncertainty about another ineffective “helicopter drop” of money by the Fed does not help the situation. There’s no telling what’s going to happen on the fiscal and regulatory side. Obamacare is in legal limbo, some states are starting implementation, and many employers have no idea what it’s going to mean for them. Congress and the president have no agreement on addressing the debt crisis as we edge up to the point of default. Spending cuts have to be part of the solution because what we have is a spending a problem.

Yes, it is.

MY SUNDAY WASHINGTON EXAMINER COLUMN: When Jimmy Carter Is Your Best-Case Scenario, You’re In Trouble. “Up to now, comparisons with Carter were a tool of Obama’s critics. From now on, they’re likely to be a tool of his defenders. Because as bad as Carter was, Obama is shaping up to be worse. Much worse.”

UPDATE: From the comments, a haiku:

Obama has failed
The worst President ever
Jimmy Carter smiles!

Heh.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More haiku from the comments:

Carter competence
with Nixonian ethics
makes worst prez ever

Indeed.

MORE: How bad has it gotten for the lefties? After an extensive — though not exhaustive — list of Obama failures in my column, leftie blogger TBogg weighs in in the comments and all he can come up with is this bit of “racer” nonsense:

Shorter Glenn Reynolds:

I don’t like the black guy.

He’s pretty much eaten alive by the other commenters, but I’ll break out this one:

Yeah, people ain’t ticked because they’re payin’ $5 a gallon for gas, they’re ticked ’cause a black guy is president!

Folks ain’t ticked because they been unemployed for 2 years, they’re ticked ’cause a black guy is president!

And nobody’s ticked because they had a sh*tty health care “reform” plan stuffed down their throats last year (for which exemptions are being handed out right and left to the main advocate’s pals and cronies) they’re all ticked ’cause a black guy is president!

Hey, I’ll bet you if by next year we’re all living in lean-to’s and searching for discarded pizza in dumpsters, we’ll all be ticked; not because of that, but because a black guy is presdient!

Because heaven knows, nobody would be bothered by any of this kind of stuff if a white guy was president, right?

When even the miserable partisan hacks can’t come up with anything better than a naked race-card play, you know that . . . well, that Jimmy Carter is the best-case scenario.

MORE: Terry Hinshaw emails: “Not surprisingly, Andrew Sullivan doesn’t much care for your critique of Obama. Note, however, his concluding paragraph which I suspect is his initial, tentative step toward accusing you of being a racist.”

Between now and 2012, everyone will be a racist for 15 minutes. It’s all they’ve got, as they try to defend this miserable failure of a President, and those charges are just an admission that they have nothing else. See the response from the commenter above, which disposes of them entirely. And isn’t it just a bit sad for Andrew to be following, however tentatively, in the footsteps of a TBogg blog comment? Come on, Andrew — raise your game!

But wait, wasn’t Andrew critiquing Obama harshly just a little while ago? “A congressional vote is also important to rein in the imperial presidency that Obama has now taken to a greater height then even Bush.” Was that racist? Never mind. He was praising Bush more effusively than I ever did, right up until he started calling me a Nazi for not joining him in Bush-hatred and Iraq war cut-and-run policies. He’s excitable, you know.

Meanwhile, speaking of “derangement,” how’s that whole Sarah-Palin’s-uterus thing going for you, Andrew?

And yeah, now I’ll get the usual 500 “ignore Andrew Sullivan” emails. But every once in a while, you have to note things for the record.

Plus, a great PhotoShop.

MORE STILL: Reader James Merriner writes:

I believe I am the only writer in the country who has covered both Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama in their hometowns during their time in state government–as well as their presidential campaigns. They were probably the most intelligent politicians, in terms of raw IQ, I have covered, so their failures in office should tell us something about what constitutes intelligence in democratic leadership. My conclusions: (1) Neither trusted the voters enough to tell them the truth. (2) They were right to do so because the voters initially bought their myths.

Ouch.

JONAH GOLDBERG: “While we’ve spent so much time comparing Obama to Carter, maybe we’ve left out the other one-term president of recent memory: George H.W. Bush. Bush, let’s recall, had soaring popularity ratings and then plummeted because of a recession that had technically ended long before reelection. And one of his biggest problems is that he was perceived as being too politically passive, unwilling to fight for his core beliefs, to the extent he had them. When he went populist, it seemed phony and calculated. He was undone in large part by his flip-flop on taxes and a primary challenge to his right. Sound familiar?”

I’m still going with Nigel Tufnel.

DAVID BRODER: Is President Obama’s Jimmy Carter Moment Nearing?

Nearing?

L.A. TIMES: Obama’s fifth-quarter Gallup approval slips, among worst 3 of modern presidents.