It's Official.... Carter Syndrome!

Good grief! Can things get any worse for the Obama Administration? This morning, Defense Secretary, Chuck Hagel resigned after less than two years on the job. Many will recall that he more or less limped into the job after being roughed up pretty severely by his former colleagues during his Senate confirmation hearings. As a result of that lacklustre reception, many believe Hagel deliberately took a back seat on national security matters to people like Secretary of State, John Kerry or the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey.

Things are not going swimmingly anywhere at the moment. In addition to all of the existing problems on the President's plate (ISIS, Russia-Ukraine, Afghanistan, etc), Benghazi continues to fester (with only a little help from Republicans, a la Whitewater in the 1990s). More seriously, it was also announced that nuclear talks with Iran remain at an impasse and that the deadline for completion will be extended once again, this time to July 2015.

Back in May, I wrote about Presidential Doctrines and suggested they were difficult things (link here). Foreign policy is messy, and it's not hard for a president to be called out for inconsistency over them. Moreover, that alone is probably the main reason such Doctrines are seldom coined by presidents themselves. It was all a small asterisk next to my joining the bandwagon of critics who were taking shots at Obama's foreign policy. Tell-all books by former officials are a robust cottage industry at the best of times. But the list of those throwing this particular Commander-in-Chief under the bus is both long and distinguished; Robert Gates, Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta have all had unflattering things to say. I expect Chuck Hagel will soon be dishing on a book tour of his own.

Hence, with this morning's news about Hagel's resignation-- quite obviously encouraged by POTUS himself-- it is hard to craft an interpretation of Obama's foreign policy that doesn't conclude it's in near free fall. Who in their right mind would accept the President's nomination to be Hagel's replacement? The President will, of course, find someone. But who ever it is will receive a rough ride from a GOP majority in the U.S. Senate still smelling victory vapours following their midterm wins earlier this month.

Asterisk removed! Obama is in Carter-land!