The contemptuous certainty of Barack Obama

That’s why Rhodes’ forthright contemptuousness made such an outsized splash. It merely put a spotlight on just how deeply in denial the president’s tiny circle of neophyte advisors have become about their self-imposed reversal of fortune. This crew, of which Rhodes is just one member, simply does not care that it has torched its reputation with a broad swath of D.C.’s most reasonable and experienced foreign policy makers and analysts.

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This goes far beyond the crew’s parlous record with Obama’s defense secretaries. (All three of Ash Carter’s predecessors — Bob Gates, Leon Panetta, and Chuck Hagel — left the administration throwing up their hands in disgust.) Even the plugged-in “less-than-hawkish types” who vented to The Washington Post’s Dan Drezner were “pretty infuriated by the fact that Rhodes sounds so sure that he has gotten foreign policy right. At a minimum,” Drezner explained, “anyone with a hand in running American foreign policy while the Russian ‘reset’ collapsed, the Arab spring curdled, and Syria, Libya, and Yemen disintegrated might consider whether such self-certainty is truly deserved.” To a key set of mainliners, Democrats included, whom Clinton will need to rally, Rhodes’ words came off as a bizarre and unseemly end zone dance on behalf of an inner circle whose deep disrespect for the foreign policy establishment is an open secret in Washington.

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For the Beltway’s foreign policy lifers, the attitude problems that have corrupted the policymaking process in the Obama White House offer a grim premonition of life under a Trump administration. But Team Clinton, itself notoriously insulated and ingrown (as Sid Blumenthal’s Benghazi-era emails reminded D.C.), will not be playing to its strengths in trying to prove it will restore the warmth, competence, and trust that the president took away — at a moment, next year, when salvaging America’s role in the world will be challenge enough.

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