Reports of O's political death have been greatly exaggerated.

Syria in the Age of Myth

Don’t believe that Obama is “ruined” and his administration is “shattered.” Three and a half years is a long stretch for a president, especially given the capabilities of the Obama team and an obsequious media. Every time Obama experiences another self-inflicted mess — from the Obamacare shake-down congressional spectacle to the 2010 midterm rebuke to the serial scandals — he manages to rebound. Already he is claiming his ineptitude was by design and that only his craft brought Putin to the table and averted a crisis; millions still believe such preposterous fantasies.

He is also a genius at diverting attention through another domestic war or foreign crisis (would that our enemies abroad hear the same slurs from Obama that he reserves for his conservative opponents at home: imagine Putin as a “fat cat,” or a warning to Assad that we “punish our enemies.”)

Benghazi, the AP, the NSA and the IRS debacles are put on the back burner by Obama’s Syria follies. They in turn will be forgotten once we brace for a new war to follow the ones waged against the evil redneck assault gun owners; the minority bashers who committed Trayvon Martin-like travesties daily; the sinister homophobes who denied marriage equity; the nativists who hated people of color and so insisted on onerous legal technicalities against undocumented workers; the voter suppressionists who demand ID at the polls; the misogynists who denied powerful professional women a little help to ensure their reproductive rights; the polluters who fouled our air and water and fried our planet; the cruel older generation that ignored embattled students struggling with oppressive loans; and union busters who hated collective bargaining.

All those wars will revive and be bolstered by even more in the next 40 months to come. “You did not build that” and “no time for profit” have demagogic children not yet born. We will hear thousands more of the tired emphatics like “make no mistake about it” and “let me be perfectly clear.” There will be hundreds more straw men: “Some do these bad things; others do those bad things, but I alone do the good things.” We have in store lots more of the teleprompted first-person I, me, my, and mine narcissism. “Bush did it” has three more years of ad nauseam utility. “Iraq” will still begin and almost end every sentence until 2017. “Working for the middle class” will follow each dismal jobs report.

Do not underestimate the rhetorical skills and political demagoguery of Barack Obama. He is as incompetent and delusional as Jimmy Carter, but he has far better sophistic skills, far better advisers, and is far more ruthless. Almost half of America does not pay federal income taxes; almost half receive some sort of government assistance. They are as loyal as the captive media to what Obama represents and delivers.

Putin will not let the Syria debacle fade entirely—aided by John Kerry’s sanctimonious efforts to be remembered as Nelson Mandela with Tomahawks, and to freelance while Barack Obama is incommunicado on the golf links.

Yet even this ongoing Syrian tragedy will not yet end Obama’s influence and power, which has been damaged but has not been lost. Brace for more.