O Lucky Obama!

A few weeks ago—or was it a few lifetimes?—I was remarking that it couldn’t be possible that President Obama could slide out of an utterly gratuitous, entirely self-inflicted mini-war with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with the help of Vladimir Putin, but that’s exactly what happened. But of course that was only a warm-up. Now the President has only had to deal with 0.003% of the political heat he deserved as a result of the “catastrophic” debut of Obamacare, the program for which he presumably hopes he will be remembered. Yes, “catastrophic”—the term repeatedly used by Washington Post web wunderkind Ezra Klein, who probably knows more about the new health care program than anyone alive—more, in particular, than Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who seems to have been a bit of a bystander at the unveiling.

Sebelius almost surely deserves to be fired, but almost assuredly won’t be. She won’t be, because she doesn’t have to be, not when House Republicans are climbing to the top of the Washington Monument and then jumping off, so that when they land on their big fat asses it makes a really loud sound. With the thud of Republican lard ringing in their ears, no one has time to think of anything else.

The best sign of how bad things are for the Republicans is that right-wingers don’t even want to talk about it. Bill Kristol is on a Mediterranean cruise, with ports of call at Corfu, Kotor, Dubrovnic, and Venice! The Adriatic, it seems, is charming this time of year! Who knew?

Ramesh Ponnuru also reports on urgent matters: a new study sponsored by Esquire Magazine on the “New American Center” is, it seems, almost entirely elitist jive. Interesting!

Jonah Goldberg, on the other hand, does comment on the Thrilla’ in DC, offering the sage advice to “just forget about it.” This whole brouhaha (or is it “kerfuffle”?) is like “family fights at a Thanksgiving table that are best forgotten.” Yes, and isn’t it fortunate that we have nondenominational holidays?

Afterwords
I’m sure that President Obama’s limitless faith in the efficacy of centralized planning won’t be shaken by this truly embarrassing fiasco. It would be sort of like admitting that one is a fool.