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The president’s pompous idiot John Kerry finally shows up in France. And he arrives with a minstrel show. Kevin Williamson has fun with it.

… The spectacle of the Obama administration’s dispatching Secretary of State John Kerry to “share a big hug with Paris” as James Taylor — who still exists — crooned “You’ve Got a Friend” is the perfect objective correlative for American decline: The pathetic self-regard of John Kerry and James Taylor’s Baby Boomers meets the cynical, self-serving, going-through-the-motions style of Barack Obama’s Generation X as disenchanted Millennials in parental basements across the fruited plains no doubt injured their thumbs typing “WTF?” It is the substitution of celebrity for power, of sentiment for analysis, of sloppy gesture for clear-headed commitment. …

… James Taylor may in fact be the quintessential man of his generation. He is the son of two highly accomplished parents, his father a physician and dean of the University of North Carolina medical school who served in the Arctic with Operation Deep Freeze, his mother a soprano who studied at the New England Conservatory of Music. A child of affluence bringing up the rear of the Age of Aquarius, he was in a mental institution by the time he was of high-school age, and then tried to launch a musical career but launched a career as a full-time junkie instead. His fortunes turned around when he inherited money and used his new status to move to London and exploit his social connections to link up with Paul McCartney and become rich and famous with a catchy song about what a complete screw-up he had been his entire life. At some point, this man who is so colorlessly country-club that he makes the Fox News weekday lineup look like the original cast of Hair declared himself a “churning urn of burning funk.” For the next few decades he proceeded to burden the world with a burgeoning catalog of insipid mediocrity until, finally, he descended to the lowest point a musician ever reaches, three steps down from busking in subway stations: He became a hired hand for politicians, playing with MoveOn.org’s “Vote for Change” tour through swing states on behalf of — small world! — John Kerry, our national personification of vanity, a kept man, dilettante, and Democratic time-server whose career was both launched and sustained by self-serving accounts of his service in the Vietnam War, a conflict that Taylor avoided by being declared mentally unfit to serve. …

Jonathan Tobin treats us to more.

One of the basic rules of satire is that it is virtually impossible to satirize something that is already inherently ridiculous. That axiom is brought to mind as America belatedly sought to reaffirm its friendship with France in the wake of the administration’s decision to snub the Paris unity rally that commemorated the terror attack on the Charlie Hebdo office and a kosher market. Neither the president nor the vice president or even Secretary of State John Kerry bothered to come to a gathering attended by over 40 world leaders. But to make up for this, Kerry brought folk rock singer James Taylor to Paris to serenade French officials with a version of Carol King’s classic ballad, “You’ve Got a Friend.” This is something so absurd that it isn’t clear even the cleverest minds at Saturday Night Live or even Charlie Hebdo could adequately convey the sophomoric nature of a lame attempt to make up for a gaffe. …

… Kerry’s cringe-inducing turn hosting his friend Taylor isn’t the dumbest thing he has done at the State Department by a long shot. Having faith in Mahmoud Abbas as a champion of peace and signing a weak nuclear deal with Iran are hard to top. But is an iconic moment that will symbolize Obama and Kerry’s ham-handed approach to allies. A song, even a folk rock classic that allows Kerry to reminisce about his youth spent falsely testifying against his fellow Vietnam vets, can’t substitute for a strong stand against Islamists or even the ability to say the word. Prior to this, it was possible to argue that U.S. foreign policy had become a joke. But after Taylor had finished warbling, even the president and his inner White House circle must be wondering what sort of a fool they’ve unleashed on the world.

Editors of the NY Daily News think the stunt shows as much disrespect as the presidential blowoff.  

John Kerry has given new meaning to the term “tone deaf.”

There America’s secretary of state was, on the visit to Paris that he should have made when world leaders linked arms in solidarity against Islamist terror.

There he was, to belatedly convey the resolve of the United States of America in defending civilization and the values of free democracy after the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket massacres of 17 people.

And there he was, forgoing a clarion call for global solidarity in favor of a hum-along with gentle, guitar-strumming folkie James Taylor.

It’s absurd but it’s not funny. It’s as bad a diss as President Obama’s no-show failure to appreciate the gravity of this moment in the war on terror. …

Andrew Malcolm lists five reasons to blow off President Real Good Talker. Pickerhead can list five reasons too; A&E is showing reruns of Storage Wars, USA has Modern Family, Kentucky is going to host Vanderbilt for a roast of their men’s basketball team, Discovery has Moonshiner reruns, and Bravo has Beverly Hills Housewives. Storage Wars is the beer drinker’s Antiques Roadshow and it’s not true watching it burns off IQ points.

For once, Barack Obama pays attention tonight to the Constitution, which requires that a president “from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union.”

There’s nothing in that sacred document about turning it into a pie-in-the-sky, political wish list, criticizing Supreme Court justices to their faces or going on for over an hour on prime-time TV and pre-empting some of our most popular shows. There’s not even any mention of a president delivering the required information in person or verbally — very verbally.

Obama’s State of the Union Addresses have been among the longest in modern history, averaging nearly 65 minutes. Not as long as the 71-minute average of Bill Clinton, who also liked to hear himself talk. But way surpassing the 37 minutes of Ronald Reagan, who was more interested in communicating. …

It’s your patriotic duty not to watch SOTU. Charles Cooke says it’s un-American.

… As a matter of basic constitutional propriety, there is something unutterably rotten about the State of the Union. The essential principle of the American settlement, Thomas Jefferson confirmed in a 1797 letter, “is that of a separation of legislative, Executive and Judiciary functions.” And as far as possible, he added, it is incumbent upon “every friend of free government” to keep it that way. Why, then, each and every January are we happy to watch the head of the executive branch walk slap bang into the middle of the legislature and deliver an unchallenged, immoderate, and entirely self-serving lecture about himself and his desires? Why do we permit one branch to issue a campaign speech in the heart of enemy territory? How do we imagine we are serving the interests of fractured government by assembling all of its moving parts in one place?

Within the English system of government — in which the executive and the legislature are fused — such an arrangement would make perfect sense. Within the Madisonian system, however, it is little short of preposterous — especially when one considers that the legislature is accorded no opportunity whatsoever to push back. Explaining his decision to abolish the practice in 1801, President Thomas Jefferson contended that the new country should not tolerate a pageant so similar in nature to the British Speech from the Throne, and announced instead that he would be fulfilling his constitutional duties in writing. …

It can certainly not be hoped that this chief executive (That would be president narcissist) will limit himself in the name of abstract, Jeffersonian principle — nor, for that matter, is it likely that his successor will, either. But why, one has to wonder, does Congress continue to applaud the charade?

Circling back to Kerry’s stunt in Paris, Clarice Feldman says it’s so dumb there’s no room for parody.

I was sound asleep when the phone rang and so I cannot be absolutely sure the conversation was not a dream, but it seemed real enough.

“Hello,” the caller began. “My name is Mr. Mensch, I am president of the Parodists of the World, professional comedy writers, and we want to engage you in a suit against the administration for tortious interference with our livelihood.”

“What exactly are you alleging, I mean specifics?” I responded.

He then launched into a litany of grievances against the administration which the Parodists claimed had made it impossible for them to continue making a living.

“First, our country sent no one to the important anti-terrorism demonstration in Paris, and then there’s Valerie Jarrett calling the march against the slaughter of innocents in Paris a ‘Parade’, as if this were some sort of celebration.‘ Certainly We Would Have Loved To Participate In The Parade,” But We “Got The Substance Right”’.” She said and then proceeded to claim that Holder couldn’t attend because he was in a very important terrorism conference at the time, forgetting that we knew everyone else at the conference made it to the march except Holder. So at the time of the march he was meeting with himself, it seems.”

“Well, that was silly, “I agreed.  “And?” I waited for the next item.

“Then our secretary of state, John Kerry, whose entire life has been fashioned around his self-imagined superior diplomatic skills and international affairs expertise, shows up speaking execrable high school level French, accompanied by  an aging ex-druggie who sings to the grieving French ‘You’ve Got a Friend’”

“I have to agree that was preposterous and really embarrassing. One wag suggested the French ought to respond by having Carly Simon sing, ‘You’re so Vain’ to the President and his Secretary of State. ‘Send in the Clowns’ comes to mind.” …

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Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, published a blockbuster last week. Here’s what a liberal foreign affairs expert thinks of the president’s efforts. We have been saying for years that the narcissist is a rank amateur. Clueless, feckless, worthless are just some of the words we’ve used in this regard. Now we hear from an expert;

Here’s why America’s failure to be represented at the Paris unity march was so profoundly disturbing. It wasn’t just because President Obama’s or Vice President Biden’s absence was a horrendous gaffe. More than this, it demonstrated beyond argument that the Obama team lacks the basic instincts and judgment necessary to conduct U.S. national security policy in the next two years. It’s simply too dangerous to let Mr. Obama continue as is—with his current team and his way of making decisions. America, its allies, and friends could be heading into one of the most dangerous periods since the height of the Cold War. …

… First, Mr. Obama will have to thank his senior National Security Council team and replace them. The must-gos include National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, chief speech writer/adviser Ben Rhodes, and foreign policy guru without portfolio Valerie Jarrett. They can all be replaced right away, and their successors won’t require senatorial confirmation.

Here’s who could succeed them and inspire great confidence immediately at home and abroad: first rate former top officials and proven diplomats Thomas Pickering, Winston Lord, and Frank Wisner; Republicans with sterling records like Robert Zoellick, Rich Armitage, Robert Kimmitt, and Richard Burt; or a rising young Democrat of proven ability and of demonstrated Cabinet-level quality, Michele Flournoy. Any one of them would make a huge difference from Day 1 in a top role. Others among them could be brought on to the NSC as senior advisers without portfolio to take the lead on specific problems. These are not just my personal opinions about these individuals; they are practically universal ones.

The State Department really needs help, too. Anthony Blinken, the new No. 2 there, is quite good and should stay. But Secretary of State John Kerry has been described even by the faithful in this administration as quixotic. …

Steve Hayward of Power Line posts on Gelb’s article.

I remember as a mere callow college student when I made out that Jimmy Carter was finished: when liberals turned on him. For example, Ken Bode, then the revered moderator of “Washington Week in Review” on PBS, wrote in 1979 “It’s Over For Jimmy” in The New Republic: “The past two weeks will be remembered as the period when President Carter packed it in, put the finishing touches on a failed presidency” (There’s lots more in this vein recounted in the first volume of my Age of Reagan books.)

So it shouldn’t surprise us that people are saying Obama’s no-show in Paris last weekend was his “diplomatic Katrina.” More serious is the Daily Beast article out yesterday from Leslie Gelb, who doesn’t come any more Establishmenty than a Harvard-trained Rockefeller. Gelb, notable for chiefly being boring, is the kind of Establishment figure who usually tut-tuts Republican presidents for being too bellicose. But he thinks Obama is circling the drain on foreign policy: …

John Fund’s recent piece on Valerie Jarrett is germane.

It’s high time the news media paid more attention to Valerie Jarrett. An old Chicago friend of both Barack and Michelle Obama’s, she exercises unusual influence in the White House as a “senior adviser.” Many in Washington believe that she is at the heart of the disappointment the Obama administration has become. They are unwilling to say so in public. But the evidence keeps piling up.

One who is isn’t afraid to speak up is Steven Brill, the author of a searing new book analyzing American health care called “America’s Bitter Pill.” Brill is a liberal and still thinks that Obamacare should have been passed. But in his exhaustively researched book (he spoke with 243 people over a 27-month period), he slams “incompetence in the White House” for the catastrophic launch of Obamacare in 2013: “Never [has there] been a group of people who more incompetently launched something.” During an interview on NPR’s “Fresh Air” last week, he lay much of the blame at Jarrett’s doorstep. “The people in the administration who knew it was going wrong went to the president directly with memos, in person, to his chief of staff,” he told NPR’s Terry Gross. But “the president was protected, mostly by Valerie Jarrett, from doing anything.” Although Obama had no idea of the issues until they ultimately reared their head, he still bears the blame, Brill said. “At the end of the day, he’s responsible. . . . The president, whatever we can say about him on policy and on giving speeches, as a manager, he failed. He didn’t know what was going on in the single most important initiative of his administration.” …

… But Jarrett isn’t any ordinary staffer. There are several things noteworthy about her. 1) Jarrett seems to be the only close Obama aide who entered the administration and is still there; 2) Jarrett has been highly successful in keeping new people with fresh ideas she doesn’t like from the president; and 3) she appears to suffer more than most staffers from a severe case of hero worship of her boss.

Consider what she told David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, in an interview for The Bridge, his 2010 book on Obama:

“He knows exactly how smart he is. . . . I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. . . . So what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but someone with extraordinary talents that they had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. . . . He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do. He would never be satisfied with what ordinary people do.”

As columnist George Will noted in astonishment: “Leave aside the question of whether someone so smitten can be in any meaningful sense an adviser. About what can such a paragon as Obama need advice?” …

John Steele Gordon posts on one of the “new ideas” that will come out of the prancing fool’s state of the union address Tuesday night.

… As for taxes, his one idée fixe has been to raise taxes on the rich, an idea that goes back to the 1840s. Consider his proposal regarding inherited property, to be unveiled in the State of the Union speech this Tuesday. It calls for heirs to inherit not only the property but also the original cost basis of the property, subjecting it to far higher capital gains taxes when the heirs sell it. As it stands now, the heirs’ cost basis is the price on the date of death.

But the heirs of large estates would have already paid as much as a whopping 40 percent under the estate tax, which is nothing more nor less than a capital gains taxes triggered by death instead of sale. Obama also wants to raise the capital gains tax to 28 percent, so the total tax take might be as high as 56.8 percent. But many capital assets, such as real estate and shares in a company founded by the decedent, are held for decades and the capital gains and estates taxes are not indexed for inflation.

So much of the value taxed away would be illusory, a tax on phantom gains. An investment worth $1 million in 1970 would have to be worth $6.1 million today for there to be any real gain at all. That won’t stop the president from calling his proposal “fair” and “the right thing to do.” It is, of course, neither, just the same century-old leftist, stick-it-to-the-rich boilerplate.

Fortunately these proposals have zero chance of getting through the new Republican Congress. Still, it’s going to be a long two years until January 20, 2017, a date that will mark what my new favorite bumper sticker calls ‘The End of an Error.”

Randy Barnett, law professor and Volokh contributor has an interesting post on the president’s duty to act in good faith. This is pretty complex and it is difficult to come up with a pithy pull quote. Perhaps it should have waited until just before the weekend. But it is a worthwhile read.

… According to this theory of good faith performance, “scarcity of enforcement resources” is an appropriate motive for exercising prosecutorial discretion, but disagreement with the law being enforced is not. The same holds true with exercising prosecutorial discretion to enforce marijuana laws in states that have made it legal under state law. Prioritizing seriousness of offenses is one thing; disagreeing with the policy of the Controlled Substances Act (as I do) is another.

But how do you tell the difference? Here is where the President’s previous statements about the scope of his powers, about his legislative priorities, and his frustration with Congress’s “inaction” become legally relevant. His prior statements go to the President’s state of mind or motive, which is dispositive of the issue of “good faith.” If the President believed that the law precluded these actions but he was exercising the discretion he was given under the law to accomplish them nonetheless, he was abusing his discretion and acting in bad faith. Whether or not the law gave him discretion is not the answer to the question, it is the problem that a doctrine of good faith performance is devised to address. …

Business Insider says there’s a reason you won’t waste your time watching the state of the union.

Sure, the pageantry and theatrics of the annual presidential address will all be there. The stem-winder of a speech from President Barack Obama. The standing ovations from his supporters, and strategic smirks and scowls from his opponents. The wall-to-wall media coverage and cable news countdown clocks.

But viewership is falling, with 20 million fewer people watching last year’s State of the Union compared to Bill Clinton’s address at the same point in his presidency.

Congress rarely follows through on the policy proposals the president unveils. And this year, the battle lines between Obama and the new Republican-led Congress will have already been set before the president arrives on Capitol Hill for the annual address to a joint session of Congress and a television audience of millions.

The dwindling impact of the big speech has sent the White House searching for new ways to break through. It’s now thinking of the State of the Union as an “organizing principle” rather than a single, communal event. …

But, we do have lots of SOTU cartoons with attitude.