But Then

clipped from pajamasmedia.com But then, like Napoleon in Moscow before him, Obama began suddenly retreating for no apparent reason. In predictable fashion, echoing the scatterbrained Jimmy Carter, he was not able to carry the whole thing off coherently. Obama was interviewed on Russian TV on the preceding Thursday, and it turned out when the program aired over the weekend that he had declined to repeat the attack on Putin that he had made to the Associated Press. Speaking with Novaya Gazeta, he refused to comment on the abusive retrial of opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was railroaded into prison several years ago just as he began making noises about running for president as a challenger to Putin. On Tuesday, things got worse. Obama breakfasted with Putin and, while not even able to remember whether Putin was “prime minister” or “president” for the second time during his visit (Obama once said he thought Austrians spoke Austrian)