WALKBACK TO FAILURE

The walkback — unspoken acknowledgment from the White House that it had blundered — began within hours after the president left the podium, and continued through the weekend.

Most of Barack Hussein Obama’s ballyhooed speech at the State Department last Thursday (5/19) was an effort rhetorically to get out in front of the turmoil in the Middle East that caught his administration by surprise.

"It will be the policy of the United States to promote reform across the region, and to support transitions to democracy," the president said.

"With this Barack Obama openly, unreservedly, and without a trace of irony or self reflection adopts the Bush doctrine, which made the spread of democracy the key U.S. objective in the Middle East," said columnist Charles Krauthammer.

The president did not acknowledge his debt to his predecessor.  It was especially cheeky of him to say, as if he’d had something to do with it:  "In Iraq, we see the promise of a multiethnic, multisectarian democracy."

Few noticed, because attention was riveted on the last few paragraphs, in which Mr. Obama signaled he wants two significant shifts in U.S. policy toward Israel. 

Recognition of a Palestinian state no longer should be conditioned on acknowledgment by the Palestinians that Israel has a right to exist.  And negotiations for creation of that state should be based on the (indefensible) borders Israel had before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

It seemed odd for the president to bring this up, because the Arab-Israeli conflict has nothing to do with the unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain that was the ostensible topic of his speech.

He alarmed Israelis — and supporters of Israel in America — without pleasing Arabs.  Hamas described Mr. Obama’s speech as "a total failure."

"Mr. Obama should have learned from his past diplomatic failures — including his attempt to force a freeze on Jewish settlements in the West Bank — that initiating a conflict with Israel will thwart rather than advance peace negotiations," said the normally Democrat-friendly editors of the Washington Post.

Many Democrats are friends of Israel, so the likelihood Congress will follow the president in his pro-Palestinian tilt is close to zero.

If U.S. policy toward Israel is unlikely to change, the president’s political fortunes may.  Jewish donors have told Mr. Obama’s re-election committee he will lose support if he is too tough on Israel, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Most Jews would never contemplate voting for a Republican.  But many may close their wallets.  And if Jewish support drops to 60 or 65 percent from the 78 percent of their votes Mr. Obama received in 2008, that could cause him trouble in Pennsylvania, big trouble in Florida.

"Rarely has a U.S. president caused such a stink with no prospect whatsoever that anything could possibly come of it," said Rick Moran of the American Thinker.

So what was Mr. Obama thinking?

According to Helene Cooper of the New York Times, the White House feared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "would box in the president" by offering a plan for Middle East peace when he addresses the House of Representatives tomorrow (5/24).

"So White House officials timed Mr. Obama’s speech Thursday to make sure he went first," Ms. Cooper reported.

The effort to one up the Israeli prime minister boomeranged badly Friday (5/20) when Mr. Netanyahu looked the president in the eye and gave him a short, respectful, but powerful explanation for why Israel can never return to the 1967 borders.

"Obama likes to bully people when they’re sitting captive in his audience and can’t respond," said Jed Babbin of the American Spectator, citing as evidence his attacks on the Supreme Court in his 2010 State of the Union address, and on Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis, in his budget speech last month.

"He sat, hand across his face, glaring at Netanyahu," Mr. Babbin said. "His bullying failed and he knew it."

The epic fail was not that the White House goofed badly on its short term political calculation, but that that calculation was made with so little understanding of the Middle East, and so little regard for strategic consequences.

If the president and his aides truly were surprised by Israel‘s reaction, said MSNBC talk show host Joe Scarborough, a former congressman: "then they’re not ready for prime time."

It took Morning Joe all this while to figure that out?  He needs to wake up and smell the burnt coffee.  Many of Mr. Obama’s Jewish supporters are.

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.