Last Friday, after six fruitless hours of negotiations, talks between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Secretary of State John Kerry broke down. Barring an unforeseen development, Russia will absorb Crimea and who knows how much more of Ukraine before Russian President Vladimir Putin is finished. Pretty serious stuff. So where was President Barack Obama Friday morning, and what was he talking about? Appearing on the "On Air with Ryan Seacrest" show, Obama talked about his trip to a Gap store, attacks on his dad jeans and his appearance on an equally insipid show, “Between Two Ferns.”

“I’ve been unfairly maligned about my jeans,” he told Seacrest. “The truth is, generally I look very sharp in jeans. There was one episode like four years ago in which I was wearing some loose jeans mainly because I was out on the pitcher’s mound, and I didn’t want to feel confined while I was pitching, and I think I’ve paid my penance for that. I got whacked pretty good. Since that time, my jeans fit very well.”

The free world, or what’s left of it, is undoubtedly reassured. No matter how ineffective, unserious and childish our Commander-in-Chief truly is, at least he’s maintaining his style.

What about substance? For the past five years, America has embraced an over-arching infantilism best described by Diana West's book, “The Death of the Grown-Up.”  The subtitle says it all: “How America’s Arrested Development is Bringing Down Western Civilization.” While there are a million armchair analysts attempting to describe the leadership gap between Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, and the so-called leader of the free world, perhaps nothing illuminates it better than the reality that one man is a former member of the KGB – and the other is a former member of the Choom Gang, a group dedicated to pushing the creative envelope on pot smoking.

Yet as much as it pains me to say it, the fault for this rests far more with us than him. Only a fundamentally unserious nation could twice elect such a fundamentally unserious president, one who would be talking about loose fitting jeans, even as the noose of tyranny grows ever tighter around the necks of the Ukrainian people. It was Georges Santayana who said that “those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it,” but that idea rests on an erroneous assumption: one can only forget something one has learned. Legions upon legions of Americans know next to nothing about their own birthright, much less the seeming echo of late 1930s European history that is unraveling right before their eyes.

Unlike many other pundits, I don’t believe there is much Obama can do to forestall the inevitable – as of now. A trifecta of EU cowardice, Russian foresight and Obama’s reflexive self-aggrandizement has made any serious pushback nearly impossible. As the Wall Street Journal revealed, no list of sanctions had been agreed upon by European leaders by Friday. Yet even if they come to some sort of agreement, a diplomat told the Journal that the EU “would likely target a ‘small but politically significant’ number of Russian officials on Monday,” even as he “discarded speculation the bloc will at this stage impose an asset freeze on senior Russian executives from Russia’s energy giants or other leading businesses, like OAO Gazprom.”

Of course not. Better to live in the warmth of expanding subjugation that the EU’s dependence on Russian fuels supplies engenders, than the coldness of liberty.

Regarding Russian foresight, billions of their assets were pulled from Western banks on Friday by Russian banks and industrial companies. And according to data published by the Federal Reserve, a drop of $105 billion in Treasuries held by foreign institutions was reported for the week ending March 12.

The Feds can’t be sure it was the Russians moving their money to a third party custodian, but it’s hard to ignore the rather astounding coincidence – especially when Obama telegraphed that economic sanctions might be imposed on Russian financial assets.

As for Obama, if he wishes to see the principal impetus behind Putin’s urges, a mirror is all that is necessary. It was Obama who cancelled the missile defense agreement with Poland and the Czech Republic made by former President George W. Bush. It was his first move in the "reset“ between the two nations and Obama pushed it to undo the "damage” created by the former president. The reality that such damage was precipitated by Russia’s invasion of Georgia was irrelevant to the man who doubled down on his acquiescence in 2012, when he promised Russian President Dmitry Medvedev he would have even “more flexibility” following his reelection. Toss in the Syrian debacle where Putin played the president like a drum, and it becomes apparent that the only reason Putin didn’t invade Ukraine even sooner was because he didn’t want to spoil the Olympic festivities in Sochi.

Not that a substantial portion of the American public really cares. An inadvertent peek into the mindset of such people came courtesy of the New York Post. A report of Obama’s Tuesday shopping spree at the 42nd street Gap was followed by one noting that the store was “flooded” with calls from those looking to purchase the same items the president had. One of those buyers could barely contain himself. "I bought the rose-colored cardigan and the jacket that Michelle got,“ said 54-year-old Mark Campion, who purchased the tops for his wife, Stephanie. "We have similar taste!”

It is hard to say when so many Americans began to truly savor the taste of wholesale inanity. Maybe the undercurrent has always been there, needing only a leader who could beguile such people with tidbits like, "we are the ones we’ve been waiting for,“ or, ”This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal“ to bring it into the open. Six years later, one is left to wonder how many of those same people remain beguiled by such drivel in a world where only the outright delusional believe any such "healing” has taken place.

Unfortunately, the elevation of one lightweight begets the elevation of others. It would take a better historian than I am to determine if people like Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Secretary of State John Kerry, U.N Ambassador Samantha Power, CIA Director John Brennan, National Security Advisor Susan Rice and Homeland Security Director Jeh Jonhson represent the most clueless and ideologically compromised assemblage of people tasked with protecting America’s national security.

But I’d bet the farm Vladimir Putin thinks so. And I’d double down that Chinese President Xi Jinping, North Korean dictator Kim Jung-un, the Iranian mullahs and a host of our allies are of the same mindset.

Even more unfortunately, there is little doubt that unchallenged aggressiveness begets more aggressiveness. The swiping of Crimea with little or no repercussion will not be lost on the other bad actors of the world, especially when it is combined with the Obama administration’s determination to reduce the size of our military to pre-WWII levels.

It is one thing for ordinary Americans to misunderstand or dismiss the notion of deterrence that having the largest military in the world represents. It is quite another for the Commander-in-Chief to not only embrace the idea, but announce it to the rest of the world.

Yet here we are. And true to form, when our national security team met Saturday at the White House to discuss what could be done to forestall the inevitable in Ukraine, Obama was not in attendance, despite having no public events on his schedule. No doubt there are more sweaters to buy. Or more rounds of golf to play, much like the president did the previous Saturday, when he teed it up with former NBA player Alonzo Mourning and sportscaster Ahmad Rashad in Key Largo, FL, even as the current crisis was metastasizing.

We have an adolescent in the White House. He was put there twice by a brigade of like-minded adolescents who apparently believed that fatuous rhetoric and sober reasoning are interchangeable concepts. Perhaps there are enough pink sweaters – or is that bread and circuses – to keep them distracted for the next three years.

America has seen good presidents and bad presidents, but the nation never seen a president in name only. Maybe I should trademark the term PINO. Barring a sea change in the current mindset, I suspect it will come in handy, especially if a former Secretary of State In Name Only wins the White House in 2016. I certainly hope not.

Eight years of parody is more than enough.

© 2014 The Patriot Post