Obama won't stand with Israel as friend or against Iran as foe

Pick just about any issue these days -- unemployment, federal debt, Israel, Iran, terrorism, illegal immigration, Gulf oil spill -- and two words always describe President Barack Obama's leadership style: "self" and "absorbed."

He tells us he saved the American economy as we know it, but my hometown of Las Vegas leads the league in unemployment at 14 percent -- and it's still climbing. If this is what Team Obama calls "saved," then please, let me give purgatory a shot.

Meanwhile, the federal debt skyrockets without a credible plan to repay it, other than to pass the buck to future generations.

The president won't stand up for Israel as a friend.

And he won't stand against Iran as a foe.

He treats Islamic terrorists like they were 1960s counterculture protesters with a righteous gripe against an imperialist America.

He gives China more respect than Arizona -- one seeks to protect its border, the other seeks to erase Tibet from the map. In Obamaland, China gets royal treatment at the White House and Arizona gets investigated by the Justice Department. Go figure.

As illustrative as all that is, nothing highlights the president's narcissistic leadership more than what's going on with the Gulf oil spill. Faced with a dire environmental disaster, this pretentious president can't rise above himself to effectively lead his people.

Just before Memorial Day weekend, for example, the president visited the Gulf shoreline with a couple of hundred environmental workers suited up in white garb. They combed the beach with the president as cameras filmed (or whirred, or whatever cameras do these days).

Local observers said they'd never seen that many workers in one place before, and that the British Petroleum workers in those special white spacesuits were rounded up just for this presidential photo-op.