Jimmy Carter Either Lying or Suffering From Dementia

Jimmy Carter must be suffering from some sort of dementia. For many people the onset of dementia brings a personality change. Remember when Carter used to say, "Ill never lie to you?" Look at what he has become beyond the errors in that hate-filled book he wrote last year, Carter has basically been called a liar by Hamas, who refuted everything he said after he returned from Syria and now says the State Department is lying when it says Jimmeh was asked not to meet with Hamas. Hell, it was in all of the freeking papers, Rice said it, the President said it...how the Hell did he not know? His memory is shot. Poor Jimmy doesn't even remember things that happened a day ago! It's an embarrassment! How does his wife let him go out in public with his diminished mental capacity?

Carter is presenting lies as truths, showing disregard for the government of his own country and an incredible hatred of Israel and the Jewish people. There is only one explanation for a decent man to have such a behavior change, dementia. That is of course, unless he was never decent in the first place.

Carter says Secretary Rice "not telling truth" By Matthew Bigg

ATLANTA (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on Wednesday accused Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice of not telling the truth about warnings she said her department gave Carter not to speak to Hamas before a Middle East trip

The State Department has said U.S. Assistant Secretary of State David Welch, the top U.S. diplomat for the Middle East, issued the warning before Carter, a veteran of Middle East diplomacy, went on his trip last week.

Rice said in Kuwait on Tuesday: "We counseled President Carter against going to the region and particularly against having contact with Hamas."

"President Carter has the greatest respect for ... Rice and believes her to be a truthful person. However, perhaps inadvertently, she is continuing to make a statement that is not true," a statement issued by the Carter center in Atlanta said on Wednesday.

"No one in the State Department or any other department of the U.S. government ever asked him (Carter) to refrain from his recent visit to the Middle East or even suggested that he not meet with Syrian President (Bashar) Assad or leaders of Hamas," it said.

It said Carter attempted to call Rice before making the trip and a deputy returned his call since Rice was in Europe.

"They had a very pleasant discussion for about 15 minutes, during which he never made any of the negative or cautionary comments described above. He never talked to anyone else," the statement said.

Carter had already on Monday, in an interview with National Public Radio, described as "absolutely false" any suggestion he had been warned not to meet Hamas.

"PRIVATE CITIZEN"

"The United States is not going to deal with Hamas and we certainly told President Carter that we did not think that meeting with Hamas was going to help the Palestinians," Rice said Tuesday while attending a conference in Kuwait.

The White House backed Rice and said events after Carter's meeting showed Hamas' true character.

Carter "is a private citizen and he made a decision to not comply with what the State Department asked him to do," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters on Wednesday.

Perino made an apparent reference to an attack on Saturday in which a Palestinian suicide bomber and two other gunmen were killed when they attacked a border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel, wounding 13 Israeli soldiers.

"Actions speak louder than words," said Perino of Hamas.

Hamas, which controls Gaza, is viewed as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel.

Carter, who met Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Syria over the weekend, is trying to draw the Islamist group into peace talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

But Rice and other senior U.S. officials are concerned that Carter's meeting could confuse U.S.-brokered peace talks already moving at a slow pace between Abbas and Olmert.

Hamas won a 2006 election and briefly formed a unity government with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. It seized control of Gaza from Abbas' secular Fatah faction in fighting in June.

ALTER-COCKER-GATE: Something Smells About Arrest of Israeli "Spy"

An 85-year-old Ben-Ami Kadish former US Army mechanical engineer was arrested yesterday on charges he slipped classified documents about nuclear weapons to an employee of the Israeli Consulate who also received information from convicted Pentagon spy Jonathan Pollard, US authorities announced. The "deed" was alleged to have happened almost 30 years ago.

Maybe its me, but this whole thing smells rancid. If this guy was such a hotshot spy, why would the US wait almost 30 years, till the suspect was 85 and living in a retirement community in New Jersey, to arrest him?

Folks I guarantee that this has more to do with Condoleezza Rice wanting to put more pressure on Israel than putting an 85-year old " alter cocker" in Jail. This move was made to embarrass Israel and weaken her support in congress and with the American people. Condy is not happy that Israel refuses to comply with everything she wants, and this is her way of punishing the Jewish State and keeping its feet to the fire. The other thing it does is quiet the American Jewish Community a bit as it will bring up dual loyalty questions.

For the FBI/CIA it has a bonus effect. With the end of Bush's second term there will be additional pressure to grant a presidential pardon to Jonathan Pollard, something the two organizations have been fighting for years. The two groups will now link the Pollard with Kadish and work to ensure that Pollard continues to rot in Jail longer than anyone else convicted of his crime.

The Case of Ben-Ami Kadish, an alter cocker living in a New Jersey retirement home has very little to do with spying and much to do with Politics. Its a shame that Condi and her Arabist State Department have sunk so low.

Another Bogus Wash Post Story---FUNNY THEY DONT LOOK DRUISH

Usually when the mainstream media is caught in an obvious mistake it tries to correct it. Of course that correction normally appears under the classifieds in small print but at least it appears. Then there is the Washington Post. The paper that worked so hard to get the truth about Watergate, doesn't give a rat's ass about truth today. CAMERA had contacted the post about mistakes it made regarding Gaza and Arabs serving in the Israeli Army. Even when presented with evidence the post refused. CAMERA has run ads asking the post for corrections, the post still refused. Maybe they should run and pointing out tha the druze people are Arabs it would help them with their math.

Insisting on an Error: The Washington Post - Infallible, or Just in Denial?

The headline over Washington Post Ombudsman Deborah Howell's April 20 column read, "Was 'Excluded' the Wrong Word?" The column itself proved that it was, and yet the ombudsman did not find that a correction was necessary to The Post's assertion that "except for a relatively small Druze population," Israel excludes its Arab citizens from mandatory military service.

Background

Post reader Wendy Leibowitz requested at correction to a Dec. 20, 2007 article by Scott Wilson, foreign editor and previously the newspaper's Jerusalem bureau chief. The article stated that Arabs other than Druze were excluded from the Israel Defense Forces. Leibowitz pointed out that many Israeli Bedouin, who are Arab Muslims, have served.

Leibowitz, sometimes using information supplied by CAMERA, pursued her request in e-mail exchanges with Howell and Wilson. Her effort was to no avail. The Post denied facts contradicting its allegation of Arab exclusion from the IDF.

Informed that thousands of Bedouin have served in the Israeli military as reconnaissance scouts and trackers, The Post insisted only a few did so — as "spies." Excluding Bedouin (as somehow non-Arab and only "spies"), The Post demanded of Leibowitz, "Give us the name of one Arab." Otherwise, "we won't back down." She supplied the names of three Israeli Arab soldiers killed in the line duty just since 2000, and referred to five others. (Two more have been killed recently along the Israeli-Gaza Strip armistice line, which she subsequently pointed out.)

In one response to Leibowitz, the ombudsman wondered why, if The Post's claim that Israeli Arabs were excluded from the military were in error, the paper hadn't heard from the IDF or the Israeli embassy in Washington. Of course, not getting a complaint hardly confirms an article's accuracy. Many ordinary readers have told CAMERA that they are resigned to Post Arab-Israeli errors (such as the more recent, uncorrected, Post assertion that "the Gaza Strip is one of the world's most densely populated places" — it's not even close — and the 21-month old, still uncorrected, claim that the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war was Israel's longest - the War of Independence, from late 1947 to early 1949, was).

The column

On April 10, CAMERA published ads headlined "The Washington Post Refuses To Correct Key Error on Israel" in The Washington Times, and in the Washington Jewish Week. The ads detailed The Post's denial of the correction request. The ad pointed out that the Los Angeles Times had corrected a similar error, and that other news media reported the matter accurately.

Reacting to the ad, the ombudsman reported in her April 20 column that "the IDF has more than 170,000 active-duty members," of whom "about 5,000 are minorities; of those, about 70 percent are Druze [who, like most Israeli Jews, are subject to the draft], and 22 percent are Arab Bedouin, some of whom have traditionally volunteered as scouts. Eight percent are Christian and Muslim Arabs and Circassians [non-Arab Muslims] who have volunteered."

Bingo! The Post discovered that the IDF accepts non-Druze Arabs. Thirty percent of 5,000 is 1,500; excluding the few Circassians, it's safe to say that nearly 1,500 Israeli Arabs are on active duty right now. They are not excluded from military service.

So why hasn't The Post published a correction? The rest of the ombudsman's column amounts to an off-the-point partial subject change. It may not open a window into the psychology of Post Arab-Israeli coverage, but it definitely shows resistance to doing what the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists calls for: "Be accountable .... Admit mistakes and correct them promptly."

"Some Arab Israeli soldiers have died in recent fighting, according to Israeli press reports," the ombudsman wrote. Yes, and according to information from CAMERA, supplied to the paper by Leibowitz weeks before the ads appeared.

Like the foreign desk unjustifiably excluding Bedouin, the ombudsman added that "that 8 percent amounts to 400 out of about 1.2 million Israeli Arabs ...." But the proper comparison, given the nature of the error, is not between non-Druze, non-Bedouin Arab soldiers and Israeli Arab society at large. Rather, as noted above, it is between the number of non-Druze Arab soldiers and the standing army, nearly 1,500 out of 170,000.

Off track

The ombudsman follows tangents irrelevant to the error and correction request. These include acceptance of Arabs by the larger, Israeli Jewish society, which faces and has faced Arab aggression. The ombudsman reports the observation by University of Pennsylvania Prof. Ian Lustick that "it is quite difficult for Arab Muslims to enter the army ... but not impossible. Unlike Christians and Bedouins, Muslim Arabs are discouraged and prevented even if they volunteer." Except that Israeli Bedouin are Muslim Arabs. So, Lustick tells the ombudsman that Israeli Arab Christians and Israeli Arab Bedouin are not discouraged from military service. They are not excluded. Two other academics, Israeli Arabs, tell the ombudsman the same thing.

Yet, "The Post's Wilson is firm on his word choice. 'It is not merely unusual to find Arabs in the IDF - it is amazingly rare. Other than some Druze soldiers, who in Israel generally do not consider themselves Arabs, and a few Bedouins, who worked as spies, I did not encounter a single Arab in IDF uniform. And I spent a lot of time with Israeli soldiers. As a class, Arab citizens of Israel are excluded from the military.'"

Translation: "I suspect I'm wrong - the Druze are Arabs, their political allegiance to the state of Israel hardly erases their ethnic/cultural background, and Bedouin, who most definitely are Israeli, Arab and Muslim also serve in significant numbers. This is regardless of whether I mistakenly called a battalion of trackers and scouts 'a few spies.' Just because I didn't see many doesn't prove they don't exist, any more than, to paraphrase Ms. Leibowitz, just because most Israelis never saw me in Israel didn't mean I don't exist. But I'm out on a limb now, so I've got to hold on."

The ombudsman concludes: "It would have been better if Wilson had qualified 'excluded' and mentioned the Bedouin." Better? It would not have been erroneous. Excluded, like pregnant, does not bear much qualification. Implicitly answering the headline over her column, the ombudsman concedes that "excluded" was indeed the wrong word.

But don't look for a correction. According to the ombudsman, though "a small number of Arabs do serve in the IDF ... it's obvious that Israel does not want them serving in large numbers or they would be drafted." Therefore, numerous volunteers to the contrary, non-Druze Arabs must be excluded from the IDF. The Washington Post says so.

Ironically, The Post's marketing slogan is, "The Washington Post: If you don't get it, you don't get it." But it's The Post that insists on not getting it. The Washington Post website introduces the ombudsman's column this way: "Reporting about Israel and the Middle East is an important but thankless task. A Middle East reporting assignment means catching flak from pro-Israel and pro-Arab groups who often see stories through their own lenses."

This is a variant of the discredited, old journalism school slogan about "if both sides are angry with you, you must have done something right." Actually, repeated criticism may suggest repeated failure. In any case, the error in question here was pointed out first by one Post reader, not a group. And CAMERA's media monitoring rests on journalistic standards — including accuracy, objectivity, comprehensiveness, context, and correcting mistakes — not whether an article makes Israel look good or bad. The Post continues in denial on this one.

Throw the UN in the Attic With the Other Old Stuff That Doesn't Work

Like wide, paisley ties, The UN should be put in the attic or wherever you throw the old stuff that is out of style. Each year the United States pays over FIVE BILLION Dollars to the international body and in return receives absolutely nothing (unless you want to count the scofflaws who park illegally all across NY City and get away with it because of the DPL license plates). If anything the UN works against US interests not only in the big green eyesore on 48th street in Manhattan, but through its organizations all across the earth. If the US decided to withhold its 5 billion dollars, what is the worst thing that could happen, the UN would become anti-American? TOO LATE. Just look at the latest appointees to work for the Human Rights Council, they are both anti-Israel and an affront to anything American:

The Second Time as Farce
Meet the UN's new Human Rights Council.
by Nile Gardiner

IF FURTHER PROOF BE needed of the terminal decline of the United Nations as a world body that purports to advance human rights, look no further than the recent appointments of Richard Falk and Jean Ziegler by the UN's Human Rights Council (HRC). Both appointments should be of major concern to U.S. leaders disturbed by the UN's increasing failure in the arena of human rights and the blatant and widespread anti-American and anti-Israeli bias among key UN human rights officials.

Richard Falk, the Emeritus Milbank Professor of International Law and Practice at Princeton, is an outspoken, zealous critic of Israel and American foreign policy who has just been appointed the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian Territories by unanimous vote. Falk has compared Israeli policy to the actions of Nazi Germany, publicly defended the reputation of former Colorado University Professor Ward Churchill, and wrote the foreword to controversial theologian David Ray Griffin's 2004 conspiracy theory treatise The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11. Falk has written of an "American Empire" and a threat of "global fascism," and according to a report in the New York Sun has bizarrely called for an official commission to investigate the imaginary role of neoconservatives in the 9/11 attacks.

Jean Ziegler, a Swiss sociology professor and UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, has been an apologist for dictators such as Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe, and once described the West Bank as an Israeli-run "immense concentration camp." As UN Watch revealed, Ziegler even co-founded the Muammar Gaddafi Human Rights Prize in honor of the Libyan dictator. He was elected to the HRC's advisory committee in March with the support of 40 of the Council's 47 members. Ziegler has rarely failed to raise eyebrows with his outspoken views, deriding the United States as an "imperialist dictatorship," rejecting the claim that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, and praising Zimbabwean tyrant Robert Mugabe by saying he "has history and morality with him." Ziegler opposed the U.S.-led military action against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, warning it would have "apocalyptic" consequences for the Afghan people, and spell "the end of the Afghan nation," and famously accused the Coalition in Iraq of cutting off food and water for Iraqi civilians in insurgent strongholds in 2005, a claim that was completely false and without foundation.

The highly controversial appointments further underscore why the United States made the right decision to boycott the new UN Human Rights Council for two years in succession, and to deny the organization future funding as well as credibility. The HRC is the successor to the spectacularly discredited UN Commission on Human Rights, an organization so reviled that even then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, a meek lamb when it came to condemning human rights abuses, somehow mustered the courage to describe it as an embarrassment. Despite inflated expectations that it couldn't be any worse that the Commission, the HRC has been a miserable failure, continuing many of the worst excesses of its predecessor, and firmly fixated upon condemning Israel at every turn.

The current Council includes several of the world's worst human rights violators, including Cuba, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. Unsurprisingly, the Council has issued numerous resolutions attacking its favorite target, Israel, while largely turning a blind eye to massive human rights violations in dictatorships such as Zimbabwe, North Korea, Burma, Chinese-ruled Tibet, and Sudan. As the watchdog Eye on the UN has documented, in its first year, nearly three quarters of the Human Rights Council's resolutions and decisions were focused exclusively on the human rights record of Israel.

With his highly sensitive position as the UN's voice on Israeli-Palestinian human rights issues, Richard Falk's controversial views demand close scrutiny. Professor Falk has rightly been refused a visa by Israel, which will fortunately reduce his ability to carry out the task of UN adviser, which begins in May. The move by Tel Aviv is in direct response to an astonishing polemic Falk penned in June last year entitled "Slouching Toward A Palestinian Holocaust," published by the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research. In the article, which he refused to disavow in an interview with the BBC, the Princeton Professor begs the question:

"Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not. The recent developments in Gaza are especially disturbing because they express so vividly a deliberate intention on the part of Israel and its allies to subject an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty."

In his piece, Falk goes on to compare Israeli actions in Gaza with the Hutu genocide in Rwanda (where 800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered), the Srebrenica massacre by the Serbs of 8,000 Bosnians, and the genocide in Darfur, which has claimed over 200,000 lives at the hands of Sudanese-backed militias, with the caveat that "Gaza is morally far worse, although mass death has not yet resulted." Describing Gaza as a "cauldron of pain and suffering for the entire population" and "the world's largest prison," Falk goes on to describe Israeli policy as imposing "a sub human existence on a people that have been repeatedly and systematically made the target of a variety of severe forms of collective punishment." In Falk's warped view:

"To persist with such an approach under present circumstances is indeed genocidal, and risks destroying an entire Palestinian community that is an integral part of an ethnic whole. It is this prospect that makes appropriate the warning of a Palestinian holocaust in the making, and should remind the world of the famous post-Nazi pledge of 'never again.'"

The comparison Falk draws between Israel and Nazi Germany is highly distasteful, insensitive, and insulting, not only to the people of Israel, who include many of the families of the six million victims of the Holocaust, but also to the victims of the Rwanda and Sudan genocides as well as the mass killing in Bosnia. In response to Falk's remarks, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel told the Daily Telegraph: "We take it personally. My grandparents were murdered by the Nazis. How can I react to these comments? They're very painful. This is a personal insult to every Israeli."

The Bush Administration and the three presidential candidates should follow the lead set by Florida Congresswoman Illeana Ros-Lehtinen, ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who has spoken out against both Ziegler's and Falk's appointments. So far the White House and State Department have been quiet on the matter, but it is time for the silence to be broken. Princeton alumni should also make their voices heard, calling on their alma mater to reject Professor Falk's inflammatory comments on Israel, expressing their displeasure with Princeton's name being associated with such an extreme position.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon should also speak on the issue, and state that these appointments undermine the credibility (admittedly thin already) and the overall standing of the United Nations. While his predecessor Kofi Annan was as meek as a mouse on human rights issues, Ban should not be afraid to address the UN's failings in this area.

The rise of Falk and Ziegler in the UN's human rights apparatus serve as an important reminder of how the UN has fundamentally lost its way and has largely thrown out its moral compass. It is important that the United States, which hands over more than $5.3 billion a year to the United Nations, demands accountability and takes a stand on the appointment to UN bodies of individuals who are a blot on the organization and whose extremist views are an affront to American values.

Nile Gardiner is the director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation.

Obama-The Not Ready For Prime Time Candidate

Senator Barack Obama is suffering from the same disease that Hillary Clinton and Rudy Guiliani had, it's called inevitably. Over the past few weeks he has gone from being the fresh new face to the stale inevitable candidate. With that inevitability, has come sloppiness, hence the stupid statement about rural America and his lousy performance in the last debate. Obama is on auto pilot but he doesn't have the experience to back it up. Its just another example of how Obama is not ready for Prime Time .

In the Essay Below Karl Rove has more examples:

Is Obama Ready for Prime Time? By KARL ROVE
April 24, 2008

After being pummeled 55% to 45% in the Pennsylvania primary, Barack Obama was at a loss for explanations. The best he could do was to compliment his supporters in an email saying, "you helped close the gap to a slimmer margin than most thought possible." Then he asked for money.

With $42 million in the bank, money is the least of Sen. Obama's problems. He needs a credible message that convinces Democrats he should be president. In recent days, he's spent too much time proclaiming his inevitable nomination. But they already know he's won more states, votes and delegates.

His words wear especially thin when he was dealt a defeat like Tuesday's. Mr. Obama was routed despite outspending Hillary Clinton on television by almost 3-1. While polls in the final days showed a possible 4% or 5% Clinton win, she apparently took late-deciders by a big margin to clinch the landslide.

Where she cobbled together her victory should cause concern in the Obama HQ. She did better – and he worse – than expected in Philadelphia's suburbs. Mrs. Clinton won two of these four affluent suburban counties, home of the white-wine crowd Mr. Obama has depended on for victories before.

In the small town and rural "bitter" precincts, she clobbered him. Mr. Obama's state chair was Sen. Bob Casey, who hails from Lackawanna County in northeast Pennsylvania. She carried that county 74%-25%. In the state's 61 less-populous counties, she won 63% – and by 278,266 votes. Her margin of victory statewide was 208,024 votes.

Mrs. Clinton's problem remains that she's behind in the delegate count, with 1,589 to Mr. Obama's 1,714. Neither candidate will get to the 2,025 needed for nomination with elected delegates. But the Democratic Party's rules of proportionality mean it will be hard to close that margin among the 733 delegates yet to be elected or declared. Mrs. Clinton will need to take 58% of the remaining delegates. Thus far, she's been able to get that or better in just four of the 46 contests.

Her path gets rougher. While Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia and Puerto Rico are good territory for her, Oregon and Montana may not be. And Mrs. Clinton will be outspent badly. She entered April with $9.3 million in cash, but debts of $10.3 million. Mr. Obama had $42.5 million but only $663,000 in unpaid bills.

In Pennsylvania, Mr. Obama's money could only wipe out half a purported 20% deficit, but the Real Clear Politics average of recent polls shows Mr. Obama behind by 2% in Indiana and ahead in North Carolina by 16%. Those states will vote in two weeks. The financial throw weight he will have in the Hoosier State could more than erase Mrs. Clinton's lead there, while keeping North Carolina solidly in his column. His money could give him a double knockout on May 6, which would effectively end her bid for the presidency.

If she wins Indiana, however, she will surely go forward – and Democrats run the risk of a split decision in June. Mr. Obama could have more delegates, but she could have more popular votes. In fact, on Tuesday night she actually grabbed the popular vote lead: If you include the Michigan and Florida primary results, Mrs. Clinton now leads the popular vote by a slim 113,000 votes out of 29,914,356 cast.

Mr. Obama will argue he wasn't on the ballot in Michigan and didn't campaign in Florida. But don't Democrats want to count all the votes in all the contests? After all, Mr. Obama took his name off the Michigan ballot; it isn't something he was forced to do. And while he didn't campaign in Florida, neither did she.

And what about the Michigan and Florida delegates? By my calculations, she should pick up about 54 delegates on Mr. Obama if they are seated (this assumes the Michigan "uncommitted" delegates go for Mr. Obama). If he is ahead in June by a number similar to his lead today of 125, does he let the two delegations in and make the convention vote even closer? Or does he continue to act as if two states with 41 of the 270 electoral votes needed for the White House don't exist?

The Democratic Party has two weakened candidates. Mrs. Clinton started as a deeply flawed candidate: the palpable and unpleasant sense of entitlement, the absence of a clear and optimistic message, the grating personality impatient to be done with the little people and overly eager for a return to power, real power, the phoniness and the exaggerations. These problems have not diminished over the long months of the contest. They have grown. She started out with the highest negatives of any major candidate in an open race for the presidency and things have only gotten worse.

And what of the reborn Adlai Stevenson? Mr. Obama is befuddled and angry about the national reaction to what are clearly accepted, even commonplace truths in San Francisco and Hyde Park. How could anyone take offense at the observation that people in small-town and rural American are "bitter" and therefore "cling" to their guns and their faith, as well as their xenophobia? Why would anyone raise questions about a public figure who, for only 20 years, attended a church and developed a close personal relationship with its preacher who says AIDS was created by our government as a genocidal tool to be used against people of color, who declared America's chickens came home to roost on 9/11, and wants God to damn America? Mr. Obama has a weakness among blue-collar working class voters for a reason.

His inspiring rhetoric is a potent tool for energizing college students and previously uninvolved African-American voters. But his appeals are based on two aspirational pledges he is increasingly less credible in making.

Mr. Obama's call for postpartisanship looks unconvincing, when he is unable to point to a single important instance in his Senate career when he demonstrated bipartisanship. And his repeated calls to remember Dr. Martin Luther King's "fierce urgency of now" in tackling big issues falls flat as voters discover that he has not provided leadership on any major legislative battle.

Mr. Obama has not been a leader on big causes in Congress. He has been manifestly unwilling to expend his political capital on urgent issues. He has been only an observer, watching the action from a distance, thinking wry and sardonic and cynical thoughts to himself about his colleagues, mildly amused at their too-ing and fro-ing. He has held his energy and talent in reserve for the more important task of advancing his own political career, which means running for president.

But something happened along the way. Voters saw in the Philadelphia debate the responses of a vitamin-deficient Stevenson act-a-like. And in the closing days of the Pennsylvania primary, they saw him alternate between whining about his treatment by Mrs. Clinton and the press, and attacking Sen. John McCain by exaggerating and twisting his words. No one likes a whiner, and his old-style attacks undermine his appeals for postpartisanship.

Mr. Obama is near victory in the Democratic contest, but it is time for him to reset, freshen his message and say something new. His conduct in the last several weeks raises questions about whether, for all his talents, he is ready to be president.