OUR PATHETIC AMATEUR PRESIDENT

Democrats in swing districts were hoping President Barack Hussein Obama would do something to distract attention from the souring economy.  But this isn’t what they had in mind.

On Friday the 13th (a remarkably appropriate date), the president waded into the controversy over plans to build a mosque and Moslem community center two blocks from where the World Trade Center once stood.  In prepared remarks, Mr. Obama gave what both supporters and opponents interpreted as a ringing endorsement of the project.

Mr. Obama’s "forceful" speech expressing strong support for Cordoba House "will go down as one of the finest moments of his presidency," predicted Greg Sargent of the Washington Post.

The president displayed great courage, Mr. Sargent said, because most Americans oppose construction of a mosque at that site.

Alas for Mr. Sargent, Mr. Obama’s finest hour lasted for only a few hours. Then it was quickly back to Amateur Hour for this increasingly pathetic president. 

Democrats are in trouble because of the knack Mr. Obama has shown for taking the 40 percent side on 60-40 issues such as health care, the deficit and illegal immigration.  So Democrats in swing districts were not thrilled when the president jumped in on the 30 percent side of a 70-30 issue.

"Faced with withering Republican criticism of his defense of the right of Moslems to build a community center and mosque near ground zero, President Obama quickly recalibrated his remarks on Saturday, a sign that he has waded into even more treacherous political waters than the White House had at first realized," said the New York Times.

Mr. Obama now says he was merely defending the right of Moslems to build a mosque at that site, not the wisdom of doing so.  But that’s an issue that isn’t in controversy.

The president’s walkback Saturday "diminished his remarks from a courageous and inspiring act into a non-sequitur, somewhat of an irrelevancy," wrote liberal blogger Glenn Greenwald.  "The ‘right’ of the mosque isn’t really in question and didn’t need a defense."

After criticism from liberals like Mr. Greenwald, White House aides walked back the walk back, insisting the president "stood by" what he said Friday.

Critics say it would be as inappropriate to build a mosque at that site as to put a Shinto shrine at Pearl Harbor.  It’s insensitive to those who lost loved ones on 9/11.

Comedian Greg Gutfield made this point by proposing to build a Moslem gay bar next to the ground zero mosque.  Backers of Cordoba House said this would be insensitive to the feelings of Moslems.  This highlighted their hypocrisy.  We should be sensitive to the feelings of Moslems, but they needn’t be sensitive to ours.

This is an odd position to take for someone who says his purpose is to build bridges, as Feisal Abdul Rauf, the chief proponent of Cordoba House, claims.

But that’s not the real purpose, say Raheel Raza and Tarik Fatah of the Moslem Canadian Congress.

"We Moslems know the idea behind the ground zero mosque is meant to be a deliberate provocation to thumb our noses at the infidel," they wrote in the Ottawa Citizen Aug. 9.

There is perhaps a clue to Imam Rauf’s intent in the name he chose, Cordoba House, which is derived from the Moslem conquest of Spain.

There are moderate Moslems, as Ms. Raza and Mr. Fatah illustrate.  But Imam Rauf, who has had kind words for the terror group Hamas, and who has said 9/11 was caused in part by U.S. foreign policy, does not appear to be among them. 

The immediate effect of the controversy created by the president’s rapidly changing remarks was to step on Democrat plans to use the 75th anniversary of Social Security to revive that as an issue.  The mosque controversy sucked all the oxygen from that ploy.

The president nationalized what had been primarily a local controversy, to the detriment of Democrats.  The hilarious efforts of liberal journalists such as Mark Halperin of Time Magazine to warn Republicans of the dangers they face by siding with two thirds of the American people illustrates how worried they are about this.

More lasting will be its effect on how Mr. Obama is perceived.  His initial mosque remarks heightened the suspicion he doesn’t understand Americans, or think much of them.  His rapid retreat from them raise questions about his judgment, his courage, and his honesty.

"The president misread the politics, gave a fuzzy speech and is now backpedaling under fire," said Web logger Tom Maguire (Just One Minute).  These are not qualities Americans on either side of the controversy appreciate in their commander in chief.

Our amateur president is looking more pathetic by the day.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.