There’s something richly symbolic about the fact that Obama’s limo broke down in Tel Aviv

And another post that’s pure me, only it showed up at Mr. Conservative first:

It shouldn’t have been complicated – if you’re responsible for the president’s huge, hi-tech, armor-plated, gas guzzling limo, and if that car is taking a trip overseas with the president, you make sure that everyone knows that this gas hog takes ordinary gasoline, not diesel.

Someone on the Obama payroll forgot to take this basic precaution, leading to a humiliating moment for American prestige during Obama’s recent trip to Israel: his car wouldn’t start.

According to Israel’s Channel Two, the wrong fuel caused the problem:

The Americans filled it up with diesel, rather than petrol.

Speaking with the New York Times, however, Edwin Donovan, a Secret Service spokesman, said that the Secret Service didn’t actually know what caused the breakdown:

“We experienced mechanical trouble with one of the cars,” said Edwin Donovan, a spokesman for the Secret Service. “We don’t know the cause.”

There have been media reports that the vehicle had been filled with diesel fuel rather than gasoline.

Donovan said the Secret Service “did not have a read on what the specific issue is at this point.”

Donovan sounds as if he’s engaged in face-saving bureaucratic-speak. Right now, we’ve got our money on the Israeli version of the story. We’re also taking bets here that, while no one in the Obama administration was fired or punished for the deaths of four people in Benghazi, if this Limo-breakdown was indeed a fuel failure, someone’s going to lose his job.

In politics, as in so much of life, image is everything. When one considers the complete disaster President Obama’s Middle East politics have been (he’s made no progress in advancing peace between Israel and the Palestinians, he’s overseen the economic and structural collapse of myriad Muslim nations, and the Muslim world hates him even more than it hated George Bush) a broken down car in Israel seems like the perfect metaphor for Obama’s Middle Eastern strategy.