After writing in the London Telegraph that Monday was "the worst
day for U.S. and wider Western diplomacy since records began,"
former British ambassador Charles Crawford asked simply: "How
has this happened?"  On the answer, opinions might differ. Or
maybe not. A consensus assessment of the past week's events
could easily form around Oliver Hardy's famous lament to the
compulsive bumbler Stan Laurel : "Here's another nice mess
you've gotten us into!"  In the interplay between Barack Obama
and John Kerry, it's not obvious which one is Laurel and which
one is Hardy. But diplomatic slapstick is not funny. No one
wants to live in a Laurel and Hardy presidency. In a Laurel and
Hardy presidency, red lines vanish, shots across the bow are
word balloons, and a display of U.S. power with the whole world
watching is going to be "unbelievably small."  The past week was
a perfect storm of American malfunction. Colliding at the center
of a serious foreign-policy crisis was Barack Obama's manifest
skills deficit, conserva