RUTHFULLY YOURS

President Obama is cutting short his visit to India to stop in Saudi Arabia to pay his respects on the death of King Abdullah and no doubt try to repair what has been a fraying relationship. It’s a good move, but he’ll need an explanation for the latest stories that the U.S. is suddenly prepared to live with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

For several years Mr. Obama has said Assad must leave power as part of ending Syria’s four-year civil war. But Administration sources are now leaking that the President thinks Assad and his Alawite regime may be part of the solution. The thinking seems to be that the priority now is defeating Islamic State, and Assad is an ally in that effort.
Where to begin? As the Saudis will point out, the first problem with these leaks is that they send a confusing signal about U.S. policy. When he unrolled his anti-Islamic State (ISIS) strategy in September, Mr. Obama promised to support anti-Assad rebels who aren’t aligned with ISIS or al Qaeda. This is hard enough given Mr. Obama’s failure to protect the rebels against Assad’s air force. But it will be impossible if the world thinks Assad is our man in Damascus after all.

The former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, has called on Israel’s leaders “to stay out of America’s politics” – just hours after he urged the United States to interfere in Israel’s politics, something he himself has been doing for years.

The latest events began with John Boehner’s invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress. The New York Times quickly sought a comment from Indyk, who is constantly quoted by the news media since the conclusion of his singularly unsuccessful term as the Obama Administration’s chief envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

No, I do not wake up in the morning with that question foremost on my mind. But rarely does a day pass without my putting the question to myself: Why does President Barak Hussein Obama still command the support of half the electorate?

Of course, one immediate response could be that the polls – given that they are largely in the hands of the Liberal Establishment who form the base of his support – may just not be accurate. But they are so consistent, sometimes reflecting a little downward movement in moments of particular crisis, that one pretty much has to accept that is the judgment to half the population which thinks at all politically, that is, that he is doing an adequate job after six years in training.