Putin Carterizes Obama, Totally -- The Democrats are vulnerable again on handling the world -- By Daniel Henninger, The Wall Street Journal

Air-dropping himself into Kiev Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the Russian seizure of Crimea is "not 21st-century, G-8, major-nation behavior." He said Mr. Putin should allow "international observers" to enter Crimea. 

International observers? 

This calls to mind Humphrey Bogart's Fred C. Dobbs facing the gang of Mexican bandidos in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre":

Dobbs: "If you're the police, where are your badges?"

Chief bandido: "Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges!"

We may assume Mr. Putin would say the masked Russians patrolling Ukrainian Crimea are "international observers." 

As of this week, it's official. Vladimir Putin has turned Barack Obama totally into Jimmy Carter.

We may quibble over the timeline. Some might say it began when Mr. Obama whispered to then-Russian president Dmitry Medvedev he'd have "more flexibility" after the 2012 election; others that it set in when the U.S. president took Mr. Putin's offer to let Bashar Assad escape the bombing of his airfields for using WMD against his own people.

"Carterization" has a specific meaning in American politics. In 1980, Ronald Reagan delivered an August speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Chicago, just as he was starting his campaign to unseat Jimmy Carter, trapped then in the Iranian hostage crisis. 

"The response from the administration in Washington" to foreign threats, said Reagan, "has been one of weakness, inconsistency, vacillation and bluff."

"Our allies are losing confidence in us, and our adversaries no longer respect us," he said. Our partners "are confused by the lack of a coherent, principled policy from the Carter administration."

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