OBAMA’S COLLAPSING WAR ON THE ISLAMIC STATE:

For the Obama administration, the news from the Middle East keeps going from bad to worse. Vladimir Putin’s power play, moving significant military forces into Syria to support his ailing client, Bashar al-Assad, caught the White House flat footed and unsure how to respond. Although the administration gave the Kremlin de facto control over American policy in Syria some two years ago when it walked away from its own “red line,” granting Russia a veto on Western action there, President Obama and his national security staff nevertheless seem befuddled by this latest Russian move.

“It appears one of the great challenges that President Obama has had to overcome in office is that no one around him is as good at their job as he is,” Jim Geraghty once wrote as part of a round-up of Mr. Obama’s more hubristic statements. For politicians who love to pose as the smartest guys in the room (not the least of which being their boss), the Obama administration sure seem befuddled by all sorts of stuff, don’t they?