In the hearings on Capitol Hill on Syria yesterday, a new Democratic meme emerged.

From the Associated Press:

Secretary of State John Kerry says the debate about military strikes against Syria is not about President Barack Obama’s ‘‘red line’’ that weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated.

Instead, Kerry told Congress Tuesday that ‘‘this debate is about the world’s red line.’’ He says it is ‘‘a red line that anyone with a conscience ought to draw.’’

Likewise, Nancy "the Hawk" Pelosi said that “humanity, not the president” drew the red line.

This is a shameless attempt to get President Obama out of hot water over his infamous red line remark, uttered during a campaign when he didn’t have the forthrightness to say that wild horses couldn’t drag him to intervene in Syria.

Now, the president is being dragged to intervention in Syria not by wild horses but by his own endlessly active mouth. The president has tossed this hot potato to Congress.

Don’t get me wrong—ordinarily, I am glad to see Congress sharing in power, something it hasn't done enough of lately. But in this instance it’s hard to disagree with George Will’s assessment of what is going on here. In a column headlined “Obama Seeks an Accomplice,” Will writes:

Because Syria’s convulsion has become as serious as Barack Obama has been careless in speaking about it, he is suddenly and uncharacteristically insisting that Congress participate in governance. Regarding institutional derangements, he is the infection against which he pretends to be an immunization.

In the Illinois legislature, he voted “present” 129 times to avoid difficulties; now he stoops from his executive grandeur to tutor Congress on accountability. In Washington, where he condescends as a swan slumming among starlings, he insists that, given the urgency of everything he desires, he “can’t wait” for Congress to vote on his programs or to confirm persons he nominates to implement them. The virtues of his policies and personnel are supposedly patent and sufficient to justify imposing both by executive decrees.

This is not a blog about whether to take action with regard to Assad’s use of chemical weapons. “Humanity,” in my book, can have diverse opinions on the use of the American military.  

This is a post about a new kind of presidency: the celebrity presidency.

Most celebrities are just rich, pampered adolescents. But only one of them is President of the United States.

Would you trust George Cluny to be Commander-in-Chief? Well, folks, that is about the size of it.

Michael Graham says that President Obama’s unserious foreign policy can be boiled down to a bumper sticker with the words, “Don’t mock me, Bro.”  

But they do laugh. And now, after five years of this feckless celebrity presidency, not even the Brits like us very much.