He builds on it with the Iranian deal. This is shameful.

Triumphantly riding into the Middle East on a unicorn.

It’s frightening to contemplate how close this guy came to being president.

On the other hand, it would have been a Carteresque single term, and we’d have probably been spared Barack Obama.

They’re reporting, a year later, that Fox News had the story right in the first place.

It’s in danger of collapsing.

I’d say it’s collapsed. As Glenn often says, another Jimmy Carter was a best-case scenario in terms of foreign policy.

Aiiiieeeeeeee! It’s melting!!!!

Those horrid little Tea Partiers:

What is at issue here is not some sacred moral value, such as “In God We Trust.” Domestic politics or the affairs of nations are not an avocation for angels. But the coin of this imperfect realm is credibility. Sydney Greenstreet’s Kasper Gutman explained the terms of trade in “The Maltese Falcon”: “I must tell you what I know, but you won’t tell me what you know. That is hardly equitable, sir. I don’t think we can do business along those lines.”

Bluntly, Mr. Obama’s partners are concluding that they cannot do business with him. They don’t trust him. Whether it’s the Saudis, the Syrian rebels, the French, the Iraqis, the unpivoted Asians or the congressional Republicans, they’ve all had their fill of coming up on the short end with so mercurial a U.S. president. And when that happens, the world’s important business doesn’t get done. It sits in a dangerous and volatile vacuum.

The next major political event in Washington is the negotiation over spending, entitlements and taxes between House budget chairman Paul Ryan and his Senate partner, Patty Murray. The bad air over this effort is the same as that Marco Rubio says is choking immigration reform: the fear that Mr. Obama will urge the process forward in public and then blow up any Ryan-Murray agreement at the 11th hour with deal-killing demands for greater tax revenue.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a president reach complete lame-duck status so soon into his second term.

Snub the General Assembly:

It’s not just our Syria non-policy that has the Saudis at arm’s length. The newfound cooperation between President Obama and President Rouhani of Iran has put an added strain on the US-Saudi relationship. The Saudis, like the Israelis, are displeased with the prospect of US-Iranian non-proliferation talks. They see them as an Iranian ploy to ease UN sanctions while continuing to press toward getting the bomb. And while the Saudis are a key American ally, they are adept at securing their interests in the region and are not beholden to Washington. If they continue to be dissatisfied with US policy, they might hinder, or at a minimum do nothing to help, other US interests in the Middle East.

I’d be very surprised if Jerusalem and Riyadh aren’t having some serious back-channel talks. They both know they can’t count on this White House.