Kudos to the press on this one. I didn’t really think any of them could bring themselves to ask the Obama administration whether Obama regretted his tragic self-beclowing at the second Presidential debate, when he responded to Mitt Romney’s claim that Russia was a geopolitical threat with a “the 80s called and they want their foreign policy back” joke; a joke that both demeaned the Office of the President of the United States and also (in light of recent events) proved spectacularly wrong on the facts. It turns out, if you leave the fruit hanging low enough, even the Press-Democrat will pluck it and take a bite. Via AllahPundit, Jay Carney’s response is almost literally unbelievable in its chutzpah:

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was asked whether President Barack Obama regretted being “dismissive” about Mitt Romney’s contention Russia was America’s “number one geo-political foe” at a press conference Thursday. Carney replied that the president had no regrets about his response to Romney’s remarks when they ran against each other in the 2012 presidential election and suggested the ouster of the pro-Russian government in Ukraine is evidence of Russia’s weakness.

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“Partisan politics are fine, we engage in them every day here,” said Carney. “But, you know, in a case like this, instead of being a partisan Republican and attacking the president, be a partisan American in identifying the outrageous actions and violations of international law that have taken place.”

If you watched the debate, you might be left wondering how the guy who claimed Russia was a serious geopolitical threat was wrong and the guy who made a middle-school-level joke about the threat posed by Russia was wrong, in light of the fact that Russia has now effectively seized control of the Crimea from Ukraine, which is apparently powerless to respond. You might be tempted to conclude that you lived in some sort of bizarro world where the guy who tried to score cheap political points by cracking a juvenile joke during a nationally televised debate about a legitimate worldwide threat could lecture his critics about “partisan politics” with respect to Russia, and do it with a straight face.

I just can’t understand this. Obama is never going to run for re-election again. You might think, in light of that, that he could at least muster, “Hey, sure, we underestimated the threat, but based on the information we had at the time, the best intelligence analysts we had were divided on whether Russia was a threat at all.” Or something. Not a flat out declaration that up is down, down is up, 2 + 2 = 5, we were right and Romney was wrong. If the same press which literally took his side about Benghazi during the course of allegedly moderating that debate is asking the question of whether maybe he wants to issue a mea culpa, is he so blind that he cannot even comprehend the possibility that he might have been wrong about something? Especially since, there’s not even any Senate Democrats he needs to cover for on this issue; they didn’t vote for his response in the debate.

The people running this country are not even serious. Either that, or they suffer from dangerous delusions of infallibility. Either way, the world at large should feel uneasy at this response.