If ever a moment caught Obamaism mid-flight and pinned its wings back for viewing, it is the present one. In domestic affairs, the country has been forced down the first stretch of the road toward untenable Euro-statism. At the same time, the U.S. secretary of state defends the new American policy of rejecting domestic Israeli construction. Had the so-called lunatics of the 2008 McCain-Palin rallies been caught saying that in the course of one day, an Obama presidency would seize one-sixth of the private sector and describe East Jerusalem housing as “undermin[ing] mutual trust” and “expose[ing] daylight between Israel and the United States,” we’d have choked to death on headlines about “playing with fire” and “the politics of fear.”

Yet, little more than a year later, we’re living in one of those clever political columns written as an over-the-top straight story from a frightening future.  “After seizing the American automobile industry almost a year ago, the Obama administration has used a parliamentary procedure to take control of one-sixth of the private sector … in other news, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton defended the administration’s stand against housing construction in Jerusalem …”

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