he president is flying home from his Asian trip. He didn't get the rock star treatment he's used to getting in Western Europe, probably because Asia hasn't entered a period of decadence yet. He also didn't get any real results, as Mike Allen in The Politico notes: SEOUL, South Korea — President Barack Obama returns from his maiden Asian swing with none of the concrete accomplishments that White Houses typically put in place before big trips, setting up a stark test for his idealistic theory that the United States should act more like a wise neighbor than a swaggering superpower. Idealistic theory is right. It's great for a student government, not for a real one. Obama’s minimalist approach was most consequential in China, where he did not meet with Christians, dissid

Former Sen. Fred Thompson today intensified his party's criticism of President Obama's long deliberation over policy in Afghanistan, announcing that Obama's delay signals that "the war has been lost" and that nothing the president now does will "make any difference." "It really doesn't matter how President Obama divides the Afghan baby, how he splits the difference between McChrystal and Biden. Because the war has been lost," Thompson said on his radio show today.? "I say this because of one sad and simple fact. The president does not have the will and determination to do what's necessary to win it. His heart's not in it, and never has been. The Taliban knows it. Al Qaeda knows it. Our allies know it. And the American people know it. "Our enemies are now emboldened and our friends are disc

There has been some remarkable press buzz, very rare, about Obama's inability to make a decision on Afghanistan. Even liberal columnists, like David Broder, have rapped the president's knuckles. You'd think, from the way the White House is acting, that no American president ever had to make a serious decision before. Or, you'd think that this president, elevated above all, has some special wisdom, some secret cerebral cunning, that he's bringing to bear on the problem. Well, the superior president got pretty testy when asked about Afghanistan on his current Asian trip, as The Politico reports: SHANGHAI, China – President Barack Obama made no effort to conceal his irritation when his press corps used the first question of his maiden Far East trip to ask what was taking him so