Leadership from President Barack Obama?  Oh, you betcha -- in two flavors. 

At home, we’ve got the prez’s vigorous lead from ahead approach, designed to “transform” America into declining socialist Europe.  There’s much historic progress on that front.  Overseas, Mr. Obama provides... shall we say, less vigorous leadership from behind, which has met with spectacular success, but as of late has caused the usually reliably Obama-shilling Washington Post to go skittish. 

Together, Mr. Obama’s leadership approaches are assuredly transforming America into something that’s not America, diminished here and overseas.  In fact, whether the prez leads from ahead, behind, or somewhere in-between, he imperils the nation.  But a little imperiling is a small price to pay for whittling down the U.S., isn’t it?  W’s Cowboy America was overdue for a whittling.  Mr. Obama is the whittler we waited for, no? 

At home, the prez leads in bending the nation to his will.  The people’s will only counts when it sides with Mr. Obama.  When it doesn’t, the prez and his congressional allies run over or around it.  Textbook example: the still unpopular but compassionate, fair, and just Affordable Care Act, aka, ObamaCare, which is neither affordable nor caring, given the testimonies of very ill Americans who’ve been dumped from their health plans.  Many haven’t the moola for premiums to underwrite all that compassion, fairness, and justice flowing from DC. 

Yet, per Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, those ObamaCare horror stories are all hooey, part of the vast rightwing conspiracy, to borrow a phrase, concocted to waylay the great compassionate, fair and, just transformation of American health care -- and amass more power, control, and money in the hands of Harry Reid and his ilk.  To suggest a seedy power grab by the prez, Reid, and Democrats is so… so anti-communitarian and anti-feelgood… so unwelcome in Obamatown.

The prez leading from ahead has given the nation IRS harassment of plucky Americans who dare drop from the path of glorious -- yes, you’ve guessed it -- compassion, fairness, and justice.  The IRS has been used as a cat’s paw by Mr. Obama to bully and silence grassroots’ efforts to legally and democratically oppose his worldview and policies.  You see, opposition isn’t permitted inside Obamatown’s cozy precincts.  It’s so… so anti-Kumbaya and anti our Maximum Leader’s manifest brilliance.

Then there’s the NSA and its domestic snooping (all for our own good, reassured RINO useful idiot, Peter King).  And lest we forget the trillions of dollars in new debt piled atop billons, trillions, zillions -- who’s really counting anymore?  The Federal Reserve funny-money infusions continue, designed to keep Wall Street dopers blissful.  The money-printing wins Mr. Obama’s blessings.  There’s billions more in food stamps, because top down government and hamstrung free enterprise have failed to spark the economy.  Able-bodied Americans can’t find jobs that pay enough to pay their bills.

And, golly gee, last week, there’s the brassy -- if a smidge deluded -- prez declaring that he and his government have had enough with “austerity.”  Time to open up Washington’s spigots to let the borrowing and debt flow in mighty red torrents -- mightier than they are already.  The prez needs to spend big to compassionately and fairly offset the injustices caused by residual pernicious capitalism and cretin-selfishness.  Damn that Ronald Reagan.    

Leading from ahead, Mr. Obama has his awesome purple crayon.  Whatever the prez can’t squeeze out of a poky Congress, he’ll simply try to produce by edict, thereby affirming that the American Revolution was merely a two-hundred-odd-year burp in elitist rule on these shores.  “Our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” are now all subject to confiscation by the IRS, anyway.

That’s a snapshot of Mr. Obama’s “ahead” leadership.  Let’s turn abroad to the prez’s behind leadership.  How’s that faring?

Gaily, so to speak, for Russian dictator Vlad Putin, that is, who Western progressives learned ruefully during the past winter Olympics is an unapologetic homophobe.  Vlad’s crass uber-nationalism is beginning to sour progressives, too. 

Putin covets parts -- eventually, all -- of the Ukraine.  Mr. Obama, coordinating with the ghostly international community, has issued tapioca statements pronouncing “consequences” if Putin doesn’t go all metrosexual in his tact toward the Ukraine. 

Our intrepid president is also phone counseling Vlad in hopes of channeling his Slav masculine aggressiveness and territorial lust into more constructive pursuits, like lo-caling Russian school cafeteria lunches and getting pasty, pudgy Russian kids to do the “Let’s Move” groove.  Putin’s complying somewhat with the latter, in that a lot of Russian youth who serve Mother Russia in the armed forces are ready to do the “Let’s Move” groove right into eastern Ukraine. 

Putin may secretly pine for the old USSR, but he knows that communism, as intellectual and practical forces, is as spent as an old Soyuz rocket.  He means to reclaim some of the old czarist Russia’s shine.    

Vlad sports silky European business suits, not ermine, and is decorating the new Russian nationalism with sham rule-of-law and democratic ruse, better to gull leftists in the West.  His aim is to aggrandize Russia through reconquest.  He’ll do it stealthily, as befits an emeritus KGB henchman, or outright -- if need arises.  But none of it affirms the prez’s ultra-sophisticated lead-from-behind pansyism.  In a hard world comprised of hard men, pansyism is an exploitable commodity.

(An update: The Daily Beast reports that Mr. Obama plans to wage economic war on Russia, if Putin invades the Ukraine.  But economic warfare against Russia, absent the will to back it up with military muscle, if required, may invite more, not less, aggression by Vlad.  Putin may gamble that our Peace Prize prez may lack the cojones to go the next step.)          

Then there’s our enlightened Appeaser-in-Chief’s cave-in to the Iranians.  Iranians never-ever intended to relinquish their aim to build nuclear weapons, though they’re doing so now with considerably less pressure from Mr. Obama and fey Western leaders.  Leading from behind means giving Iran a generous timeline to accomplish its sinister ends.  The U.S. and its spongy Western allies will just have to learn to “accommodate” a nuclear-armed Iran.  The Israelis are swimming by their lonesomes.    

Remember American ally and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, who had the rug pulled out from under him by Mr. Dump-our-allies-from-behind Obama?  That’ll teach America’s friends -- the good, bad, and ugly amongst them -- to trust the U.S.  Egypt’s new military rulers get that cuddling with Mr. Obama ain’t a long-term commitment. 

The Arab Spring, so bruited about by our peace-loving prez, is a phantasmagoria of destruction, violence, and death.  Across the whole swath of North Africa and the Middle East, tumult erupts.  America’s enemies gain footholds.  But, oh, my, my, “Arab Spring” has such a sweet, mellifluous sound.  Branding trumps product.  Mr. Obama’s desire to put “boots on the ground” in Syria is a contradiction, but given the often crippling rules of engagement that our military labors under in Afghanistan, lead from behind is superbly expressed operationally.    

To the Far East is China, which recently laid claim to international waters and islands not theirs.  The waters and islands aren’t of much account; what the Chinese want is the booty underneath, the oil and gas deposits.  China’s claim is but a baby step in more to come, because like Putin, the Chinese perceive our benighted Mr. Obama’s lead-from-behind leadership as craven.  They fail to grasp the copious amounts of compassion, fairness, and justice that lie behind Mr. Obama’s foreswearing of assertive American self-interest and the drawing of hard lines. 

We could go on, but why?  The upshot: America grows less free and the world much more dangerous.  And it’s still a long, scary three years before Mr. Obama is led out the door at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.