WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL - AT 4:17 P.M. ET:  Now here's an example of leadership, a great statement by Mike Pence, chairman of the House Republican Conference:

"The President has the right to draw the line where he chooses to draw it but I am someone who believes that when Ronald Reagan went to the Brandenburg Gate, he did not say 'Mr. Gorbachev, that wall is none of our business.' He went to the Brandenburg Gate and he said, 'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.' We know from people like Natan Sharansky and Alexander Solzhenitsyn that deep in the gulags of the Soviet Union, when Ronald Reagan was willing to call the Soviet Empire 'the evil empire,' it gave encouragement to the people who were fighting tyranny within the Soviet Union."

Now we're talkin'.  When Republicans are awake, they do very well.  Mr. Obama is under the gun on Iran.  Increasingly, he sounds like a second-line diplomat from a European country, not like an American president.   Mike Pence reminded him of what an American president sounds like.

June 18, 2009