IS THE ACT COMING TOGETHER? – AT 8:43 A.M. ET:  Speaking of performances, good and bad, one that recently didn't win any awards was the performance of the Obama administration in handling Libya. 

If you want to see the Obamans taken apart brilliantly, and with English charm, watch Harvard historian Niall Ferguson do the job in an appearance on MSNBC.  It's here, and you'll cheer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9sMo-LTdSc

But is the government in Washington finally getting its act together?  A story running at Fox News gives us some reason for very cautious optimism:

GENEVA -- The United States is pressing its European allies to set tough sanctions on the Libyan government, to turn up the heat on Moammar Qaddafi and convince his remaining loyalists to abandon the regime, U.S. officials said. The Obama administration also declared it stood ready to aid Libyans seeking to oust their longtime leader.

It's that last sentence that intrigues me.  What precisely do they plan to do?

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will make the administration's case for stronger action to foreign ministers from Britain, France, Germany and Italy when she holds a series of high-level talks Monday in this Swiss city.

Clinton will also look to coordinate future U.S. sanctions on Qaddafi's government with senior officials from Russia, Australia and the European Union so that the international community presents unified opposition to the attacks that have killed hundreds of people in the North African country, senior administration officials said Sunday.

COMMENT:  The Obamans have been slow, sluggish, and vague, and we're still not convinced that sending Hillary, or anyone else, on errands, will have much effect.  But we'll watch the next few days, and see whether anything we do, or the Europeans do, can end the bloodshed and and turn Libya toward a better future.

Again we caution that revolutions usually don't end all that well.  The Arab world has no democratic tradition, and we can easily go from bad to worse if the post-revolution environment is botched, as it often is.  The Islamists wait in the wings.

February 28, 2011