The big news, of course, is that s.z. has returned to the Amish-like corner of the internet she once made famous for quality, hand-crafted mockery and thorough, but gentle snark.  The lesser news is that the use to which Jonah Goldberg continues to put the Op-Ed pages of the Los Angeles Times ensures that somewhere in heaven right now, H.L. Mencken and Robert Benchley are beating the crap out of Johannes Gutenberg.

The theme of today’s sermon is:  If Obama’s as presidential as he claims, then why doesn’t he order stealth bombers to nuke Russia, like in a Tom Clancy novel?  Or is he a total fake?

The Obama campaign has for months pursued the odd strategy of having the junior senator from Illinois act as if he were already kinda-sorta president of the United States.

Wow, that does sound really…what’s the word…?  Presumptuous.  I sure hope nobody makes the connection…

If the would-be president can seem plausibly presidential, voting for him might not seem like such a crapshoot. It all makes sense, even if it fosters an air of presumptuousness.

Now fate has given Obama a chance to be presidential rather than pretend.

So the president, vice president, Speaker of the House, and all 99 other senators are dead, leaving Obama President of the Senate Pro Tempore?  Fate’s being a little bitch today.

Taking advantage of the Olympic distraction in Beijing…

It’s certainly distracted the current president:

TOP SECRET

From:  General of the Army Valentin Vladimirovich Korabelnikov
To:  Prime Minister Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
Re:  Operations Designed to Inhibit U.S. Response to Troop Movements in Abkhazia and South Ossetia

Summary of Analysis:  The Directorate of Operations believes that any U.S. military and diplomatic response to Russian operations in the Caucasus region can be delayed indefinitely by paralyzing policy- and decision-making at the highest levels of the Administration.  This can be achieved by penetrating the White House with a team of female GRU operatives attired in scanty athletic togs.  Cultural exchange officials will be informed that the women are a visiting Russian volleyball team, while the U.S. President will be informed that in the interests of Russo-American comity, he must act as the “Spanking Machine.”

…the Russians invaded South Ossetia, a territory on the north side of Georgia, a democratic U.S. ally. Out of the blocks, the Russians bombed civilians, rolled tanks across an internationally recognized border and threatened to launch an all-out, destabilizing war. Now it looks as if their army has cut Georgia in two.

In retrospect, we probably shouldn’t have egged the Georgians on prior to their attack on South Ossetia, or emboldened them in the first place by supporting their aspirations for membership in NATO.  So I guess if there’s one thing I’ve learned from the past eight years of the Bush Administration, it’s that emboldening is bad.  Whether you’re emboldening the terrorists, or emboldening our allies, the consequences are uniformly unhappy, so take a personal inventory of your life and make sure that you’re not enabling emboldening.  Remember:  Friends don’t embolden friends.  Or enemies, either…Um…In fact, everybody just stop with the boldness, right now!  I don’t even want to hear about people washing their clothes in Bold laundry detergent, or pouring excessively bold barbecue sauce on their pork ribs until further notice.

Anyway, Jonah’s in a bit of a snit because Obama has merely issued statements condemning the violence, instead of ordering a carrier group into the Black Sea to show the flag.  Or trying to pick a fight with Russia like John McCain, who announced that “[T]oday, we are all Georgians,” which I hope means we’re at least entitled to the Membership Discount at the Stalin Museum.

The invasion of Georgia elicited a wan written communique instead of the sort of exciting rhetoric we’ve come to expect from his make-believe presidency. But he did make it in front of the cameras the next day for a rally celebrating his vacation in Hawaii. He promised “to go body surfing at some undisclosed location.”

Well, actually it was a welcoming rally by supporters, and the “body surfing” remark was about Obama’s decision to avoid political appearances while visiting his family, and not intended as advice to President Bush on how to respond to bloodshed in Russia’s Near Abroad.

During Obama’s make-believe presidency, we’ve heard about bold action, about the courage to talk to dictators. When faced with a real “3 a.m. moment,” Obama…proclaims, “I’m going to get some shave ice.”

Did someone call Obama at 3 in the morning and ask him if we should bomb Russian troops in Tskhinvali?  Couldn’t they have just asked him if his refrigerator was running, or sent a dozen pizzas to his house?  Has no one any respect for the classics?

Anyway, the Imaginary Pundit goes on:

Now, of course, this is a bit unfair in that Obama had planned his no doubt well-deserved vacation for a very long time. But presidential vacations are always well planned — and often interrupted.

Except when bin Laden is determined to strike inside the U.S., but you’ve already rented a Weed-Eater to deal with that brush out back of the house in Crawford.

Indeed, President Bush’s jaunt to the Olympics as a “sports fan” should also have been cut short the moment tanks started rolling over a country he’d proclaimed a “beacon of liberty” during his visit there in 2005. By Monday, both Bush and Obama were playing catch-up to Sen. John McCain, who seemed to have grasped the gravity from the get-go and whose support for Georgia is long-standing. He took the lead from the outset, demanding on Friday morning an emergency meeting of NATO and Western aid to the fledgling democracy.

But at least he wasn’t presumptuous about it.

The geopolitical significance of Russia’s invasion of Georgia at this stage is hard to gauge.

“I’ve tried war-gaming it out, but for some reason Parker Brothers, the makers of Risk, didn’t see fit to outline Georgia on the game board.  But I’m totally about to kick Yakutsk’s ass!”

The campaign significance for Obama is easier to calculate. He has been playacting at being presidential in order to convince voters that we live in a “new moment” with “new challenges” — and that he is the president we need for this new era.

This moment calls for more than playacting, yet Obama looks lost without a presidential script. Events in the Caucasus — and, for that matter, in Beijing — suggest that the times aren’t so new after all. Two powerful antidemocratic foes are once again flexing their muscles at a moment when America seems weak and distracted.

Like John McCain confronted with sprinkleless donuts.

That is not a new challenge but a very old one.

So we need a very old man to cope with it.

Perhaps this is not a time for a novice spouting grand rhetoric about a new page in history, but for someone who’s actually read the pages of some old, but still relevant, books.

Most of which are available FREE with a subscription to NewsMax.

UPDATE:  It’s true that McCain has gotten out front on this issue, but as nimbly as he’s stepped, he’s still got a length of ethically dubious toilet paper dangling from his heel:

John McCain’s chief foreign policy adviser and his business partner lobbied the senator or his staff on 49 occasions…while being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the government of the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

The payments raise ethical questions about the intersection of Randy Scheunemann’s personal financial interests and his advice to the Republican presidential candidate who is seizing on Russian aggression in Georgia as a campaign issue.

McCain warned Russian leaders Tuesday that their assault in Georgia risks “the benefits they enjoy from being part of the civilized world.”

For as Scheunemann so movingly said, “If Georgia falls, so falls their Accounts Payable department.”

Posted by scott on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 at 4:39 pm.