Opinion: Best of the Web Today: President Martyr

Peter Baker of the New York Times informs us in a "news analysis" that "for Barack Obama, a president who set out to restore good relations with the world in his first term, the world does not seem to be cooperating all that much with his bid to win a second." Thanks a lot world, you ingrate!

The world's perfidy notwithstanding, "polls show Mr. Obama with a double-digit advantage over [Mitt] Romney on foreign policy," Baker notes. But in a cruel twist of fate, "in the latest New York Times-CBS News poll, only 4 percent of Americans picked foreign policy as their top election concern."

Fate is cruel to Obama in more ways than one: "If anything, the dire headlines from around the world only reinforce an uncomfortable reality for this president and any of his successors: even the world's last superpower has only so much control over events beyond its borders, and its own course can be dramatically affected in some cases. Whether from ripples of the European fiscal crisis or flare-ups of violence in Baghdad, it is easy to be whipsawed by events."

All indisputably true. It's also true that into every life a little rain must fall, but that's not much of a defense for a poorly performing employee whose boss is considering whether to renew his contract.

Lately we've seen a spate of articles blaming Obama's failures on impersonal forces beyond his control. Thus Chris Cillizza in the Washington Post:

Lost in the chatter about whether President Obama will win a second term in November is an even bigger--and perhaps even more important--question: Is it possible for a president--any president--to succeed in the modern world of politics?Consider this: We are in the midst of more than a decade-long streak of pessimism about the state of the country, partisanship is at all-time highs and the media have splintered--Twitter, blogs, Facebook and so on and so forth--in a thousand directions all at once. . . ."Due to the evolution of our politics and media, we may never see a two-term president again," said Mark McKinnon, a senior strategist for President George W. Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns.

We are going to go out on a limb and predict that we will see another two-term president, though perhaps not this year.

"In the same years when presidential politics changed so greatly, governing did, too," writes the Times's Tom Wicker: "It got harder. . . . The rise of single-interest politics and independent legislators has made it more difficult to put together a governing coalition; sophisticated new lobbying techniques wielded on behalf of virtually every interest group further complicate the task. And a strong argument could be made that the major issues--energy and the economy, for instance--are more complex than they were."

Hey, wait a minute. Didn't Tom Wicker die last year?

Why yes he did. That quote came from a column he wrote in April 1980, the last time a Democratic president was in the midst of an unsuccessful re-election bid. And he's not the only one whose 32-year-old plaints sound awfully familiar.

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Jimmy Carter was known for his bright smile.

"The Presidency today is entangled in the great crisis of all established authority," wrote Henry Graff, a Columbia University historian (now emeritus) in the Times July 25, 1980. "Executives of every kind--political, educational, ecclesiastical, corporate--are under incessant public attack." The president's life, Graff wrote, "is under such relentless scrutiny that he can only seem ordinary, never extraordinary. No man is a hero to his valet, and America is now a nation of valets."

Graff did not mention Twitter, blogs, Facebook and so on and so forth.

"Watching President Carter try to juggle all the contradictory foreign and domestic problems of the nation during a presidential election and an economic recession, you have to wonder who can do it and who can govern America," wrote James Reston, another Times columnist, in June 1980.

Reston, who died in 1995, concluded: "Carter's campaign theme is clear. It is that while the economic figures are not on his side, the economic 'trends' are changing for the better, and that, as he hopes to demonstrate in his meetings with world figures, he knows more about foreign policy than [Ted] Kennedy, Reagan or [John] Anderson."

Then again, it's easy to be whipsawed by events.

"The presidency has grown, and grown and grown, into the most powerful, most impossible job in the world," declared the subheadline of a Jan. 13, 1980, Washington Post story, whose author, Walter Shapiro, has since ascended to Yahoo! News.

Titled "Voters Expect to Elect a Mere Mortal," the Shapiro story (quoted by the Media Research Center) observed: "Voters have lowered their expectations of what any president can accomplish; they have accepted the notion that this country may never again have heroic, larger-than-life leadership in the White House. . . . Some voters have entirely discarded textbook notions about presidential greatness and believe that Carter is doing as good a job as anyone could in facing new and difficult problems and in coping with an independent and restive Congress."

In August 1980 (in a story not available online), Post reporter Robert G. Kaiser, now an editor, described the speech in which Carter accepted the Democratic nomination:

President Carter in 1980 had to try to explain why he had not become the sort of leader Jimmy Carter promised to be in 1976. . . .Not surprisingly, this 1980 Carter sounded much more defensive. Carter's 1976 acceptance speech contained no negative references to . . . Gerald R. Ford. it was entirely a positive statement.About a fourth of last night's speech was devoted to lambasting the Republicans and Ronald Reagan. If the Grand Old Party should win in November, Carter said, "I see despair . . . I see surrender . . . I see risk." He also sees repudiation, of course, which explains his defensiveness. . . .Carter's acceptance speech in 1976 was a magical moment, perhaps the high point of his political career. Carter spoke quietly that night in the lilting cadence of a Baptist preacher with a sure sense of himself and his message. . . .There was no magic in Thursday night's speech. Instead, a weary convention heard the sounds of slogging from a worried politician who knows he is in deep trouble.

Listen closely and you can hear the sounds of slogging echo across the decades. They emanate not just from the failed president but from sympathetic journalists trying to absolve him of the responsibility for his failure.

We learned in the 1980s that the presidency was still big. It was Jimmy Carter who turned out to be small.

Progressive Child Sacrifice The guys at ThinkProgress.org, a division of the Center for American Progress, are outraged that the Maricopa County, Ariz., sheriff's office rescued a 6-year-old girl from a suspected human-smuggling ring--or, as TP's Judd Legum puts it, that "Joe Arpaio, the controversial Arizona Sheriff from Maricaopa [sic] County, arrested a 6-year-old undocumented immigrant on Friday."

Legum's source is an Arizona Republic article, which explains that sheriff's deputies (not Arpaio himself) picked up the girl along with 15 adults "at an undisclosed location in northern Maricopa County" (which presumably means north of Phoenix). "The whereabouts of the girl's parents or other caretakers is unknown," the Republic explained. "All of the people traveling with her claimed to know nothing about the girl."

A sheriff's spokesman told the Republic: "She's been turned over to ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] to try to determine where she's from. She told us she's from El Salvador."

On Twitter last night, we repeatedly asked @ThinkProgress (an account used chiefly by Legum): "What would you do with an unattended 6-year-old, let her go?" He evaded the question, answering only: "not arrest her."

There seems to be some confusion over the meaning of the word "arrest." A sheriff's spokesman told us this morning that the girl was not arrested but was turned over immediately to ICE, along with three of the adults. The other 12 adults were booked for suspected crimes.

The Republic story says she was arrested--and inasmuch as she was in the sheriff's department's custody until the transfer to ICE was complete, that would fit the dictionary definition of the word: "to take or keep in custody by authority of the law."

It's certainly true that Arpaio is controversial. He is widely hated by the left, and some of the complaints about him have merit. In this case, however, it appears his deputies acted properly, even heroically, and saved a little girl. If taken seriously, CAP's unfounded--and still unretracted--criticism in this case amounts to an endorsement of child sacrifice in the name of partisan hatred.

Indian Wall Whoop You have to admire Elizabeth Warren for producing such comedy gold in these grim times. The Boston Herald reports on the latest:

At the South Shore Chamber of Commerce the other day, the Harvard prof was asked to reveal one thing about herself that the voters don't know about--such as body tattoos or an "inhaling" past."Well, I got nothing interesting on tattoos or inhaling," said Warren. "So, um, I can wallpaper! I'm actually damn good at it, too . . . I've even wallpapered ceilings which anyone who wallpapers knows how hard that is. I am a multi-skilled person."

It turns out, however, that before entering politics, her attitude toward wallpapering was one of intellectual snobbery. Yes, that is possible:

In a 2007 interview with UC Berkeley prof Harry Kreisler, Warren recalled how, as a teenager, she decided to wallpaper the family's Oklahoma loo."My daddy said, 'Nobody in our family knows how to wallpaper,' and I said, 'How hard could it be? People dumber than us do it every day.' "

Today's Herald reports that "four outraged Cherokee activists who say Elizabeth Warren's campaign has ignored their emails and phone calls will trek to Boston this week in hopes they can force a meeting with the Democratic Senate candidate over her 'offensive' Native American heritage claims."

That's 128/32nds, for those keeping score at home.

Ad Hominem Fallacy of the Day "At the same time, [Lee] Greenwood, whose claim to moral supremacy might be challenged on the grounds that he has been married four times, took repeated opportunity to denounce the principal in the news media, saying that her decision offended him 'as a Christian.' "--Ginia Bellafante, New York Times, June 17

Metaphor Alert

• "For brave men who want to be in control of their life, the path will be to transcend the gender box and dismantle their conditioning. "--Jayson Gaddis, GoodMenProject.com, June 13
• "As much as I love the irony of seeing liberals squirm with the same problems they have for years inflicted upon conservatives, I feel that we conservatives ought to be cautious. It's way too easy to get complacent and lazy watching liberals implode, foisted on their own petards as the seeds of their self-imposed ideological isolationism have finally taken root to grow a bumper crop of weeds. It's way too easy to convince ourselves that, given the recent decline in liberalism's shining star, we don't really have to push ourselves."--Dan Naden, PJMedia.com, June 16
• "The Democrats have a nuclear option in this political game if the high court throws out the healthcare law as unconstitutional. That blowup-the-system button, not pushed since FDR's attempt to stack the court with Democrats during the New Deal, is for Obama to use the bully pulpit of the White House, and the national stage of a presidential campaign, to launch a bitter attack on the current court as a corrupt tool of the Republican right wing. . . . Some Democrats, sensing a political windfall, can't wait to start the offensive."--Juan Williams, TheHill.com, June 18

Out on a Limb "On Eve of Health Ruling, Ruth Bader Ginsburg Predicts 'Sharp Disagreement' "--headline, Politico.com,

We Blame George W. Bush

• "The Bush 41 presidency coincided with a recession, which ruined the astronomical poll numbers that Bush racked up after the early 1991 Gulf War and led to his loss to Bill Clinton. As president, Bush blamed a global slowdown and inaction by a Democratic Congress for the downturn."--Steve Kornacki, Salon.com, June 15
• "Health officials have confirmed that an Oregon man has the plague after he was bitten while trying to take a dead rodent from the mouth of a stray cat. . . . Central Oregon health officials don't blame the cat."--Associated Press, June 15
• "God Is Not to Blame for Every Disappointment in Life"--headline, Chicago Tribune, June 18

We Blame Global Warming "Ruling on US Health Reforms Hotly Anticipated"--headline, Agence France-Presse, June 18

It's a Cookbook "Rick Santorum on Serving Mitt Romney: 'It's Pretty Much a Flat No' "--headline, Puffington Host, June 17

This Guy's So Out of Touch, He's Boasting About His Luxury Cruises "Third Fed Stimulus Won't Be Better Than QE2, Romney Says"--headline, Bloomberg, June 17

Life Imitates 'Star Trek'

• Dr. McCoy: "Well, don't look at me. It's the tribbles who are breeding. If we don't get 'em off this ship, we're gonna be hip deep in them."--from "The Trouble With Tribbles," aired Dec. 29, 1967
• "Joan Tribble held tightly to her cane as she ventured into the overgrown cemetery where her people were buried. . . . The white men and women buried here are the forebears of Mrs. Tribble, a retired bookkeeper who delights in her two grandchildren and her Sunday church mornings. They are also ancestors of Michelle Obama, the first lady."--New York Times, June 17, 2012

Longest Books Ever Written

• "The Folly of Obamacare"--headline, Washington Post, June 18
• "Obama's Pity Party"--headline, Washington Free Beacon, June 15

Generalissimo Francisco Franco Is Still Dead "Hollywood Still Hates Bush-Cheney"--headline, Townhall.com, June 15

Life Imitates the Movies

• "Says a policeman, shrugging, 'I guess it's one of those gay-Arab- biker-sushi bars,' a line that has the ring of vintage Buck Henry about it."--New York Times review of "Protocol," Dec. 21, 1984
• "Obama Celebrates Anti-Police Riot Started at Mafia-Owned Bar for Transvestites"--headline, CNSNews.com, June 16, 2012

The Proof Is in the Pudding "Turkey: Kurd With Lemon Accused of Supporting Terror"--headline, BBC website, June 15

So Much for the War on Drugs "Students Get Crack at Real World Advertising"--headline, Daily Local News (West Chester, Pa.), June 15

Where's Rachel Carson When You Need Her? "Birdies Finally Arrive, but Woods Falls From Lead"--headline, New York Times, June 17

I'm Too Sexy for This Lode "Striking Miners Fearing Austerity Measures in Violent Clash With Police"--headline, Associated Press, June 15

We'll Hit the Stops Along the Way "Metro Rolls Out Rush Plus"--headline, Washington Post, June 17

Questions Nobody Is Asking

• "Is Hispanic the New Black?"--headline, Bloomberg, June 18
• "Are You Better Off Than You Were 10 Years Ago?"--headline, Slate.com, June 18
• "Romney in a landslide?"--tweet, @BarackObama, June 16

Answers to Questions Nobody Is Asking

• "Why I'm a Weepy Dad and My Dad Wasn't"--headline, Globe and Mail (Toronto), June 15
• "Did Young Romney Impersonate a Police Officer? Another Witness Says Yes"--headline, Joe Conason syndicated column, June 15
• "Yes, Ron Paul Just Won Iowa--in a Sense."--headline, Washington Examiner website, June 17

It's Always in the Last Place You Look "Fecal Matter Hiding in Hotel Rooms"--headline, ABCNews.com, June 17

Too Much Information "Mass. Cyclist Attacked by Man Swinging Sausages"--headline, Associated Press, June 18

Someone Set Up Us the Bomb "Putin Makes Just Russia Founder Envoy"--headline, Moscow Times, June 18

News of the Tautological

• "Knowledge of Fractions and Long Division Predicts Long-Term Math Success"--headline, Carnegie Mellon University press release, June 15
• "How voters view the presidential election could affect the outcome."--subheadline, Los Angeles Times, June 17
• "Why the UN Suspended Ineffective Observer Mission in Syria"--headline, Christian Science Monitor, June 16

Breaking News From 1812 "Along the U.S.-Canadian Border, Skirmishes Persist Over War of 1812"--headline, The Wall Street Journal, June 18

Breaking News From 1940 "Germany Disposes of Denmark to Win Group B, Advance to Quarters"--headline, Sports Illustrated website, June 17

Bottom Stories of the Day

• "Rielle Hunter Claims Edwards Had Multiple Mistresses"--headline, NationalJournal.com, June 18
• "Romney to (Almost) Visit County Saturday"--headline, Lancaster (Pa.) Intelligencer Journal, June 15
• "Jay Carney Pleased With Greece Vote"--headline, Investor's Business Daily website, June 18

Is Our Children Learning? A teacher in the New York City borough of Queens "has been banned from all city schools after he allegedly made inappropriate comments and gestures during a sexual education class," WCBS-TV reports:

Former students told CBS 2′s Jessica Schneider that Dyrel Bartee, a teacher at Grover Cleveland High School was getting too explicit in his descriptions.He has been accused of spreading his legs to demonstrate childbirth and grabbing his crotch to emphasize a point about sexually transmitted diseases."I seen it for myself, he was a creep," said Leslie Sanchez.

The real outrage here is that the English teacher is still in the classroom.

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(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Terry Holmes, Jared Silverman, Joshua Bowman, Evan Slatis, Richard Davis, Bill Roberts, David Gerstman, Michael Brennan, Brett Stevens, Tom Tuttle, T. Young, Dave Ceely, Jon Lindquist, Eric Jensen, Jordan Keiser, Michele Schiesser, Bill Hines, John Nernoff, Mordecai Bobrowsky, Don Undis, Bruce Goldman, Greg Baruch, Barry Kaplovitz, Ed Lasky, Miguel Rakiewicz, Chris Mario, Jerry McOscar, Ray Hull, Jeryl Bier, David Hallstrom, Brian Mattern, Herbert Sorock, Bob Walsh, Daniel Foty, Rich Schroeppel, Michael Smith, Mark Finkelstein, John Williamson, Howard Ellis and Rod Pennington. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)