THE IMPENDING CRISIS - AT 8:28 A.M. ET:  I get the sense, in surveying news and commentary around the internet, that even liberal writers sense that there's an impending crisis in the Obama administration.  The president's obvious lack of leadership can no longer be hidden.  His inability to sense the difference between campaigning and governing is a public embarrassment.  These things are bad enough.  But, increasingly, we get the feeling of a growing fear - not annoyance, or frustration, or disappointment - but fear.  The president may well, through his dithering, and his adolescent view of the world, be putting us in danger. 

Reader Bart Rogers reminds us that some of the most perceptive work on Obama is being done by British writers.  Toby Harnden of London's Telegraph reports on something that should scare anyone with a knowledge of recent American history - Obama's dependence on Joe Biden, whose track record on foreign policy is something only a mother could admire.  Harnden's piece is delightfully called, "Joe Biden: the worrying rise of Barack Obama’s Mr Wrong":

Want to know how to deal with a momentous issue of war or grand strategy? You could do a lot worse than check out what Vice-President Joe Biden thinks – and plump for the opposite.

Mr Biden was chosen as Barack Obama's running mate last August because he was old, white and supposedly knew a lot about foreign policy. I say "supposedly" because really Mr Biden's overseas expertise amounted to having spent a long time as chairman of the Senate foreign affairs committee, knowing the names of lots of world leaders, and being able to josh around amiably with them during congressional junkets across the globe.

Feeling safer?

The real difficulty with Mr Biden, however, is his judgment.

On all the big questions, he has been – to put it politely – on the wrong side of history. In 1990, he voted against American forces expelling Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. He voted for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and advocated splitting it into three states along ethnic lines. He opposed the Iraq troop surge of 2007 that pacified the country and rescued the US from the jaws of defeat.

That's only the start.  Going back to the 1970s, Biden's judgment on foreign policy has been consistently wrong. 

Now, Mr Biden is pushing a policy of what he terms "counter-terrorism plus" – a scheme which involves a much smaller military presence in Afghanistan, with al-Qaeda elements being targeted at long range by military drones and smart missiles.

This runs entirely against the counter-insurgency doctrine convincingly outlined by Gen Stanley McChrystal, who wants an extra 40,000 troops to enable NATO forces to protect and influence the people while mentoring the Afghan army and police, and gathering intelligence on the ground.

The problem is that Mr Obama may now be listening to Mr Biden.

You'd think he'd know Biden's record.  But maybe he agrees with it.

Mr Obama's inclination on troop levels seems to be to seek a middle way – a "splitting the baby" option that could be the worst of all possible worlds.

The usual vultures are circling:

The Left, sensing that Mr Obama is wavering and beginning to rethink his campaign contention that Afghanistan was the "good war" as opposed to Mr Bush's evil Iraq adventure, is throwing its lot in with Mr Biden. There's a solidifying conventional wisdom in Washington that Mr Biden's star is in the ascendant.

And that should worry all of us.  I think Harnden gets it right.  Hamlet is listening to the wrong court jester.

October 19, 2009