Breaking News: Russian PM Signs some kind of Paper

The White House is flailing under a pall of ignorance, disorganization and unprofessionalism. It has the air of an Italian city’s Sanitation Department. In a desperate bid to not make the US into an appetizing target, the president presiding over this embarrassment is trying to find a way international policy matter that will permit him to preach to the converted, and get visible kudos on cue: arms control. Now the eternally troubled baby boomers and everyone they’re conditioned into parroting them can take get sentimental about an old straw man from the malaise of the 1980s.

The president:

yesterday hailed an agreement with Russia to cut the two countries’ nuclear arsenals by two-thirds as a move that would "liquidate the legacy of the Cold War".
The president said the agreement would usher in a new phase in US-Russian relations. "The new era will be a period of enhanced mutual security, economic security and improved relations," he said.

It’s an old dream, this age of Aquarius business where we want to buy the world a Coke and keep it company, or like, whatever.

Under the agreement, the United States and Russia will reduce the two countries’ nuclear arsenals to an agreed upon range of 1,700 to 2,200 warheads. The United States currently has about 7,000 strategic nuclear weapons, Russia about 6,000.

The president in question is George Bush, and by virtue of ideological fanaticism and blindness unparalleled since Mao’s cultural revolution, it was not considered at all, and immediately identified as a bad idea based solely on the ideological reflexes of the press.

Now, it will be called “historic”, “brilliant”, and any other superlatives that are available for rent. Absent is the fact that Moscow signs things that look great in the news (such as the Kyoto accord, or as agreed with the EU on the Georgia adventure,) with no intention of actually abiding by them.

Evidently the fact that this nearly always happens isn’t enough evidence for the press to be skeptical about Obama’s childish bid for good publicity. He’s such a lightweight, his office is acting as though this is no different than cutting a ribbon at a kindergarten, something that when brought to idly signing treaties undermines America’s plausibility and moral authority.

The obviousness that pandering wrecks the tools of soft power seems completely lost on the White House. “Seems” I say, because it could well be that they’re just acting out a holding action to prevent the world from noticing what a horrible state State is in.