There’s no way Barack Obama would have appeared on Fox Wednesday night in a sit-down interview with Bret Baer had not the President’s health care bill been in serious trouble. Things must be really bad, even with all the legislative legerdemain being cooked up by Pelosi and company. The interview itself was testy with Baer doing relatively well, I thought. Nevertheless, the President was able to filibuster away from answering most of the questions. But whoever “won,” I doubt it changed many minds at this point; everybody’s already so disgusted with the process. (I was amused by the competition between Baer and Obama over the number of emails they received. When Baer claimed 18000 for Fox, Obama felt he had to best him with 40000 a day to the White House.)

When you think over the last year, it’s clear Obama has some of the most inept advisers in recent presidential history. Allowing him to risk his entire presidency on a global overhaul of health care – when an incremental overhaul could have been had simply for the asking – seems absurd politics, win or lose. It also isn’t worth that much in the grand scheme of things – other than the obvious, increasing the amount of the economy under government control. The nostalgia for marxism inherent in it all this almost pathetic. Don’t these people live in the real world?

And yet we have had virtually nothing but health care for the last twelve months. When Obama pops up to in the foreign policy sphere, you’re surprised to see him there. What does Iran have to do with health care? (Well, there’s nuclear fallout. That’s a health issue.) His reply on Iran at the end of Baer’s interview seemed almost perfunctory. He insisted he was wrangling other countries in opposition to the mullahs’ nukes. But we know it’s not true. He’s not really interested in that. What keeps Obama up at night is the House health care vote, member by member by member by member. Heaven help us.

How far the “hope and change” optimism has fallen in slightly more than a year!

According to a new poll from Xavier University, pessimism about the future is pervading our culture: Only 23 percent said it will be easier for the next generation to achieve the American Dream, while 68 percent said it will harder.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt, no conservative by any stretch, is detecting a “happiness deficit” in our president:

Here’s a theory about why President Obama is having a tough political time right now: He doesn’t seem all that happy being president.

I know, it’s the world’s hardest job, and between war and the world economy collapsing, he didn’t have the first year he might have wished for. And, yes, he’s damned either way: With thousands of Americans risking their lives overseas and millions losing their jobs at home, we’d slam him if he acted carefree.

Still, I think Americans want a president who seems, despite everything, to relish the challenge. They don’t want to have to feel grateful to him for taking on the burden.

Hiatt concludes:

A year later, here’s how they [the Obamas] came across to People Magazine:

“It was their first interview of the New Year on Jan. 8 in the rose-colored library on the ground floor of the White House. President Obama spoke in such a hush about the loneliness of his decisions on war and terrorism that one could hear between his words the tick of an old lighthouse clock across the room.”

Do Americans really want to hear the tick of the old lighthouse clock? Or would they prefer the good cheer that we associate with FDR or JFK, the jauntiness with which they took over the White House and made it theirs?

Less lugubriousness wouldn’t necessarily buy him a health-care bill. But in the long run, Americans might find it easier to root for or with Obama if he’d show us, despite everything, that he’s happy we hired him.

Well, this morning at least, it doesn’t look as if there is going to be a health-care bill – one that passes anyway. The Dem Whip is opining that the vote could slip past Easter – a sure sign the bill is in trouble. Conventional wisdom had it that Obama postponed his Asian trip to get the thing passed before Easter, for fear that when the Members returned to their home districts for vacation they would get a negative earful from their constituents. Well… look what’s going to happen. It’s not a cure for depression.

ONE OTHER NOTE on Presidential Depression: What we may be watching is what happens when a man who has faced very little adversity in his life finally has to.

For all of my looooong life, the Jews have been so deep in the pocket of the Democratic Party it would make Chris Matthews blush. Maybe… just maybe… (I know old habits die hard)…. thanks to Barack Obama, that is about to end. The well-put lede from this morning’s WSJ opinion piece details the situation:

In recent weeks, the Obama Administration has endorsed “healthy relations” between Iran and Syria, mildly rebuked Syrian President Bashar Assad for accusing the U.S. of “colonialism,” and publicly apologized to Moammar Gadhafi for treating him with less than appropriate deference after the Libyan called for “a jihad” against Switzerland.

When it comes to Israel, however, the Administration has no trouble rising to a high pitch of public indignation. On a visit to Israel last week, Vice President Joe Biden condemned an announcement by a mid-level Israeli official that the government had approved a planning stage—the fourth out of seven required—for the construction of 1,600 housing units in north Jerusalem. Assuming final approval, no ground will be broken on the project for at least three years.

The Obama administration has taken the admonition to “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer” to a new level. They want to make love with their enemies while taking their friends to the woodshed and beating the living daylights out of them. And take them they did, time after time. First Biden, then Hillary, then some semi anonymous character at the State Department dressing down Ambassador Oren (talk about disrespecting your betters!), then on to the talk show circuit with the droning Gibbs and Obama’s “best Jew” David Axlerod. His other “best Jew” Rahm Emanuel was nowhere in evidence, as far as I know. (Interesting, that).

But back to my lede. Is the Jewish love affair with the Democratic Party about to end? I know many will be skeptical. And they should be. But I suspect something is brewing. This kind of excessive and weirdly paternalistic attitude to the state of Israel, directed so clearly from the top, seems to come out of a kind of unexamined personal animus. The long record that Obama has of friendship with virulent enemies of Israel has not gone unnoticed.

Whatever the etiology, group love affairs with political parties cannot help but be self-destructive. They may begin in a burst of mutual admiration but they will almost always devolve into a self-destructive “taking for granted” that could only work to the benefit of one party (if that). The love affair between African-Americans and the Democratic Party has been similarly useless for blacks. In the forty years I have lived in Los Angeles, I haven’t noticed life getting significantly better in South Central, a region of the city in which Republicans are about as scarce as killer whales.

This doesn’t mean I think Jews or blacks or anybody else should become Republicans. They should think for themselves and even change sides when it’s advantageous. For Jews, Obama’s behavior is indeed a “teaching moment.” The bizarre over-reaction to a minor incident in Israel should serve as a wake up call.

Will it? It won’t be easy to tell at first. The coming AIPAC meeting in Washington, at which Clinton and Netanyahu will speak, will undoubtedly contain a certain amount of nice-nice talk. But beneath the surface sands are shifting. We shall see if this morphs into a tectonic plate.

And then there’s Iran.

UPDATE: Eric Cantor speaks up. Also see John Podhoretz.

Israel has been bad. Very bad. At least, according to the US. Hillary Clinton called Benjamin Netanyahu the other day and remonstrated with him as if he were a seven-year old who didn’t put his toys away for the fiftieth time. The presenting complaint:

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley described the nearly 45-minute phone conversation in unusually undiplomatic terms, signaling that the close allies are facing their deepest crisis in two decades after the embarrassment suffered by Vice President Biden this week when Israel announced during his visit that it plans to build 1,600 housing units in a disputed area of Jerusalem.

Clinton called Netanyahu “to make clear the United States considered the announcement a deeply negative signal about Israel’s approach to the bilateral relationship and counter to the spirit of the vice president’s trip,” Crowley said. Clinton, he said, emphasized that “this action had undermined trust and confidence in the peace process and in America’s interests.”

I have used the shrink’s term “presenting complaint” quite deliberately because I suspect something rather different is going on here. Leaving aside the Israeli political infighting revolving around the announcement of the building plans coming behind the Prime Minister’s back, what really is manifesting itself here may be just another display of the Obama administration increasing weakness and confusion. They have no foreign policy achievements whatsoever with little on the horizon. They don’t even seem to have a plan. They wanted to make a show at least of trying to solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem.

The emphasis is on the “show” and the “trying” for obvious reasons. Nothing in the current situation augured for this to be anything more than a charade. Israel is totally concerned with Iran, as it should be, and nothing about the Palestinians has ever shown that they really want an independent state, alongside an Israeli one anyway. If they did, they would have had that state decades ago.

So this is about the Obama Administration appearing to do something more than it is about reality. And then blaming somebody else. Nothing new about that. It’s their modus vivendi. All hat and no cattle, as the saying goes.

UPDATE: Abe Foxman also thinks something’s wrong.

MORE: It gets worse. Those great “friends” of the Jews the Europeans are thinking of putting trade sanctions on Iran, er, scratch that, Israel:

The European Union might use its trade ties with Israel as leverage to pressure it into renewing peace talks with the Palestinians, Catherine Ashton, the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy at the EU said on Saturday.

Ashton was speaking at an EU foreign minister conference held in Spain. Swedish Foreign Minister, Carl Bildt, said that Israel’s announcement on building in east Jerusalem during United States Vice President Joe Biden’s visit last week was intentional and not coincidental.

He would know.

Geert Wilders – the sometimes-libertarian Dutch politician currently on trial for “hate speech” in his country – has become a kind of Rorschach test for right-of-center American pundits. He has recently been under attack by Glenn Beck, who seems to have called him a fascist, and by Charles Krauthammer, who, while more judicious, claims Wilders does not understand, or misconstrues, the difference between Islam and Islamism (and is therefore not worthy of our support).

Beck’s criticism of Wilders is pretty dismissible since the populist TV commentator does not appear particularly versed in European affairs. Indeed, in the video linked at his name, Beck erroneously identifies French politician Dominique de Villepin as “far right” and then mispronounces his name – in fingers down a blackboard fashion – as if he had confused the Chirac protégé with the truly fascist Jean Marie le Pen. Maybe he had. Only his producers, who have served him poorly here, know for sure. And maybe even they don’t, which is the problem. (Beck should also have another look at Jonah Goldberg’s book and at Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom before he makes such simplistic conclusions about fascism, the left and the right across the pond.)

I could go on about how the American Right ought to become sophisticated about international affairs (not that the American Left is!), but I will pass on to Charles Krauthammer, a man many of us – myself included – regard as the sine qua non of conservative columnists. He too seeks to distance himself from Wilders:

What he says is extreme, radical, and wrong. He basically is arguing that Islam is the same as Islamism. Islamism is an ideology of a small minority which holds that the essence of Islam is jihad, conquest, forcing people into accepting a certain very narrow interpretation [of Islam].

The untruth of that is obvious. If you look at the United States, the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the U.S. are not Islamists. So, it’s simply incorrect. Now, in Europe, there is probably a slightly larger minority but, nonetheless, the overwhelming majority are not.

Paul Mirengoff of Powerline responds:

The words “radical” and “extreme” connote the relationship between Wilders’ view and mainstream thinking (in this they differ from the word “fascist,” which connotes a specific ideology). In the politically correct West of today, I believe it is fair to characterize Wilders as radical and extreme.

But is Wilders wrong? Krauthammer says he is because the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the U.S. and Europe are not Islamists. Wilders does not deny this. As he said last week in London:

The majority of Muslims are law-abiding citizens and want to live a peaceful life as you and I do. I know that. That is why I always make a clear distinction between the people, the Muslims, and the ideology, between Islam and Muslims. There are many moderate Muslims, but there is no such thing as a moderate Islam.

Wilders is making a theological point here — his contention is that Islam, as set forth in the teachings of the Koran, “commands Muslims to exercise jihad. . .to establish shariah law [and]. . .to impose Islam on the entire world.” I’m no scholar of Islam, but I believe Wilders is correct. To show otherwise, one would have to explain away portions of the Koran. It is not enough just to call Wilders’ interpretation of that book “narrow.”

If you agree with Mirengoff – and I do -, it is important to support Wilders in his trial, if only as a supporter of fundamental free speech. The ACLU – if it existed in any honest fashion – would be behind the Dutchman in a heartbeat. Such support would seem to be obvious and an easy choice for a man like Krauthammer. So why his unease with Wilders?

As promised earlier, Lionel and I review this year’s Oscar ceremony and the victories of “The Hurt Locker” and “The Blind Side” with a “Special Guest” who may or may not reappear. At the end, we reveal our Best Picture of the year. I don’t know about Lionel, but it was an easy choice for me. It may surprise you – or not. Anyway, here’s “Hollywood Makes a Right Turn at the Oscars.”

The 2010 Academy Awards may not have marked the end of “liberal Hollywood” as we know it, but they certainly put a solid dent in it. With the pro-military “The Hurt Locker” winning over the enviro-pabulum of “Avatar” and Sandra Bullock garnering the Best Actress Oscar for a Christian movie, the times are a-changin’ at least somewhat, maybe even a lot.

But one thing is now certain. It is time for conservative, center-right and libertarian filmmakers to stop feeling sorry for themselves and go out and just do it. Their “victocrat” days are over. No more excuses. “The Hurt Locker” and “The Blind Side” have proven that it can be done. Get out of the closet, guys and gals. If you want to make a film with themes you believe in, quit whining about Industry prejudice and start writing that script and trying to get it made. That’s not an easy thing, no matter what your politics.

Right siders can take inspiration too from Sunday’s Oscar ceremonies themselves. They weren’t defamed for a moment. Missing in action was the usual libo-babble, no extended hymns to the cause du jour or ritual Bush-bashing. And Barack Obama wasn’t even mentioned. Not once. But the troops were – several times by Kathryn Bigelow.

And, yes, we can all take pleasure in her being the first woman to win Best Director, again no matter which side of the political spectrum we come from. She did a Helluva job.

And, oh yes, I thought Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin did a reasonable job of hosting too – a lot better than the likes of Letterman, etc. They kept things moving along (except for the unbelievably tedious “salute to horror” and the traditionally soporific dance numbers). And didn’t you like the look on Sean Penn’s face when Bullock won for “The Blind Side”?

More here on Poliwood with Lionel Chetwynd and me: Hollywood Makes a Right Turn at the Oscars.

The New York Times has an informative and depressing piece this morning: U.S. Enriches Companies Defying Its Policy on Iran. Not that it matters. Last week we learned that Russia and China just about torpedoed any serious sanctioning of Iran anyway. Meanwhile, France’s Sarkozy – the most militant of world leaders regarding Iran – is in electoral trouble. No wonder crazy A-jad continues with his wild bellicose statements: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday called the September 11 attacks on the United States a “big fabrication” that was used to justify the U.S. war on terrorism, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Glad it was official. But what do we do? In his column the other day, David Ignatius provided a cynical, but alas accurate, quote from retired US diplomat Douglas Paal: “Sanctions always accomplish their principal objective, which is to make those who impose them feel good.” Okay, then?What next? Nobody wants war and nobody wants a nuclear Iran. Maybe the Administration should start priming the space program again. We’re outta here.

When I first moved into my house in the Hollywood Hills (1989), the Academy Awards were far away at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion or the Shrine Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles. No longer. As the world knows (or the world that cares anyway – more of that in a moment), in 2002 the Oscar ceremony moved to the Kodak Theater in that post-modern nightmare known as the Hollywood & Highland mall — home to myriad mediocre restaurants, retro Heavy Metal t-shirt shops and the odd Versace store. It’s not more than a half mile from my house as the stoned crow flies.

And there went the neighborhood.

This means that every year at this time, major arteries are shut off (making the already mind-bending traffic even more hellacious), the area becomes riddled with satellite trucks and temporary grandstands, and the usually quiet hills are filled with Oscar parties. Replete with bad, loud and often off-key rock and roll, echoing through the canyons — Bono doesn’t play for these things — these parties are anything but glamorous. Often an expensive-looking home is rented out to whoever (porn producers, racketeers, real estate developers) for a day or two of non-stop festivities, resulting in narrow winding streets littered with beer bottles, pizza boxes and, no surprise, condom wrappers. (Note that many of these homes these days are normally empty, luxurious remodels that never sold in the dead housing market, despite plummeting prices.)

At one point it seemed I gave up my neighborhood in support of something America cared about. Anecdotal information suggests this is not so anymore. As I write this, a snap CNN poll (yes, it’s Internet) registers that 62% will be following the Academy Awards “not at all” and 30% “somewhat” with only 8% at “very.” Actually I was surprised the “very” was that much. In the Tea Party era it would seem Hollywood and America were at a period of maximum estrangement.

Still, human beings that we are, we desire, maybe even need, entertainment. It’s worth remembering that some of Hollywood’s finest hours were during the Depression. (Of course, that was under an entirely different system than we have today.) So that pair of Oscar rejects — Lionel Chetwynd and I (we were both once nominees, but not winners) — will be covering Oscar night for an Academy Awards postmortem Poliwood, which should be up late Monday on PJTV. We’ll be reviewing the evening, including the novelty of having two hosts — Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin — and the even greater novelty of having ten best picture nominees.

On the face of it, I oppose the latter. It’s kind of like movie business “grade inflation.” And like most “grade inflation,” it waters down the results. But as Sly Stone once put it, “Everybody is a Star.” So why not?

And, of course, we’ll be watching for the amusing, infuriating or eye-rolling (your choice) use of the platform by Oscar winners or presenters to espouse the pseudo-liberal cause du jour. Be grateful for one thing: this year, at least, Al Gore is not nominated.

ADDENDUM: Lionel and I will be viewing the event, just as you are (if you are), from in front of our television sets. As Academy members, we are entitled to seats, but at a few hundred a pop, doubled for a significant other. And those seats would be in the distant balcony, since we are not nominees or related to one. QED: we’ll watch from home.

Call it the “Gunfight at the Not-OK Corral” but things don’t look so happy down at Camp Washington Post these days. That antediluvian dean of political reporters David S. Broder is taking pot shots at his “friend” (when someone calls you “friend,” watch out) WaPo young (well, young-ish) buck Dana Milbank for articles Milbank wrote. Broder also hits Jason Horowitz – evidently not a friend – even harder for a “purported news story” by Horowitz in the paper.

These stories – purported or otherwise – concerned Rahm Emanuel and whether the President’s key adviser was long for his job, currently an expanding brouhaha in the media. To be clear, I have no view on this subject – whether Emanuel is or was good, bad or indifferent – since I am far from the “leakers’ circuit” providing the necessary information or disinformation to form an opinion; nor do I much care, since the entire Obama Administration, as far as I’m concerned, could drop off the planet at this point. But it is all fun to watch, in a gallow’s humor sort of way.

The ironic subtext of all this is that all three WaPo writers were so deep in the tank for Obama during the election they could see China – or Saudi Arabia, as the case may be. But that, of course, was in another country and the dead wench in this instance is an administration approaching rigor mortis. And withal, fingers must be pointed and blame assessed both within the administration and the Washington Post. This blame game within the Post, however, will be more of a dumb show with only egos at stake. Inside the Administration, I predict, it will be more serious blood sport. When things go this bad for so long, people got fired, nasty memoirs written, and so forth. Whether Emanuel or Geithner or someone else will be the first to go, who can tell? But once one goes, many may. And then everything may start to unravel. Get out your popcorn – but don’t eat too much of it. You may not have sufficient health care to deal with the attendant stomach disorders.