The American Spectator

Remember the reaction of the teacher played by Robin Williams to a bloodlessly mathematical introduction to poetry? He roared at the unseen author of the offending textbook: “Excrement! That’s what I think of Mr. J. Evans Pritchard! We’re not laying pipe! We’re talking about poetry. How can you describe poetry like American Bandstand? “I like Byron, I give him a 42 but I can’t dance to it!” Obama and his team seem to have forgotten that setting foreign policy is more like laying pipe than like reading poetry.

Here we turn from movies to music to bring the point home, because the Obama Doctrine is jarring in the same cringe-making way that John Denver singing “Mustang Sally” would have been jarring. Similarly, there are very good reasons why talented singer and drummer Karen Carpenter never opened a concert singing George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone.”

There are a few musicians who can play in any genre (banjoist Bela Fleck and cellist Yo-Yo Ma come to mind), but Barack Obama’s political career is not even remotely analogous to the professional arcs on which they have traveled. Maybe doo wop can shed light on why Team Obama team needs a do over: Who put the dip in the dip-dee-dip-dee-dip is a forensic question in the way that who wrote the book of love is not, because some things are better left undone.