Shortest Books Ever Written

The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.

Shortest Books Ever Written
“In Defense of the TSA”–headline, New York Post, May 13

Out on a Limb
“2012 Election a ’50-50 Proposition’ for Obama, Top Pollster Says”–headline, Chicago Tribune, May 12

That’s Where the Dough Is
“DEL CRIME: Masked gunman robs pizza”–headline, Associated Press, May 11

News of the Tautological
“Lack of Babies Could Mean the Extinction of the Japanese People”–headline, FoxNews.com, May 11

Obama’s Base Is Unhappy
“The consensus is that [Barack] Obama has not lived up to the lofty expectations that surrounded his 2008 election and Nobel Peace Prize a year later,” the Associated Press reports. But actually this is good news for Obama, since these people who are disappointed with Obama can’t vote against him. They’re foreigners.

The bad news for Obama is that he “still enjoys broad international support,” because non-Americans really dislike Republicans. We particularly enjoyed this defense of Obama:

Foreign policy expert Josef Braml, who analyzes the U.S. for the German Council on Foreign Relations, said many Germans give Obama too much of the blame because they don’t understand the limits of his powers.

“There’s a lack of understanding both of how the system of checks and balances works–or doesn’t work any longer–and a lack of understanding of how big the socio-economic problems in the United States are, which cause the gridlock,” Braml said in a telephone call from Greece, where he was on vacation.

So the problem isn’t that Obama is weak or out of touch with Americans but that he is constrained by a system of checks and balances. If only the top executive had fewer limits on his power! And we all remember how well that worked out for the Germans.

For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”