It might seem like Mr. Miyagi once tutored Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton on foreign policy. Since January, the administration has been practicing diplomatic Jujitsu: hands off (North Korea), hands on (Israel), hands off (Iran). This week, it’s hands on Honduras. In fact, the administration was so quick to condemn the “coup” in Honduras that you could almost hear the Karate whiplash sound. The AP reported today:

“Earlier, Obama said in a statement he was “deeply concerned” about the events, and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Zelaya’s arrest should be condemned.”

Of course, we cannot blame Pat Morita, who passed away in 2005, for the administration’s interventionary/noninterventionary paradox. Obama and Clinton studied the lessons of Saul Alinsky, not Mr. Miyagi. Obama’s and Clinton’s formative training in leftist community politics help to explain the administration’s response to the Honduran crisis.

Pretty much all Alinskyites are leftists, but not all leftists are necessarily Alinskyites. It would be presumptuous to assume that the Obama administration’s knee jerk condemnation of the Honduran government stems entirely from ends-justify-the-means domestic political calculation. Much of the leftist base would be sympathetic to Zelaya for idealistic rather than pragmatic political reasons.

In their youths, both Obama and Clinton were admitted hard leftists. It is difficult to gauge how much of their original “idealism” either of these two grizzled politicians have retained over the years. However, if we are to believe their speeches in front of leftist audiences, we have to assume that both Obama and Clinton still think of themselves as progressives. Well, ever since the 1960s, the left has been sympathetic to Marxist tin pot dictators, especially in this hemisphere. In the early 1960s, vanguard members of the New Left traveled to Cuba to support that nation’s revolutionary transformation (before later traveling to Southeast Asia to assist the Vietcong). The left has had a soft spot for Castro ever since. Likewise, in the 1980s, the left vigorously supported the Sandinistas. Today, I suspect that a healthy majority of American leftists are sympathetic to Hugo Chavez.

How can we explain the Obama administration’s quick and one-sided response to this affair other than by taking into consideration the Left’s tendency to sympathize with Marxist dictators like Chavez and wannabe dictators like Zelaya? For an excellent analysis in defense of the Honduran government, see the Wall Street Journal.

For brevity’s sake, it suffices to say that all the other branches of the Honduran government were opposed to Zelaya’s scheme to rewrite the Honduran Constitution and have himself declared President for life. The most egregious intervention into Honduran affairs was being perpetrated by Hugo Chavez. Prior to this past weekend, Obama/Clinton called for peaceful resolution in this case, and that is exactly what they got. The Honduran government arrested the wannabe dictator and sent him out the country unharmed. The army and police were acting under order of the Honduran Supreme Court. As long as the military cedes governmental authority to the proper constitutional authorities, this action cannot be regarded as a coup.

President Obama called on Honduran officials “to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic charter.” Which side in Honduras has been attempting to do just that? Unlike in Iran, there have been no reports that the Honduran government has been targeting civilian protesters. Obama also stated that, “Any existing tensions and disputes must be resolved peacefully through dialogue free from any outside interference,” he said. Okay, why is his administration interfering now? The administration’s quick, vocal condemnation of Honduras offered a sharp contrast with its cautious response to the much harsher actions by the Iranian regime.

The Cuban Revolution, Vietnam, the Sandinistas, and now the Chavez axis are not just two-dimensional causes to the Left, they are symbolic causes. Let’s say that you’re drinking a beer with a young hard-core movement leftist in Berkeley and you tell her that your grandfather fought against the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Then, you tell her that you lived in Nicaragua in the 1980s, fighting on the side of the Sandinistas. And now you work for an NGO in Bolivia. Anything you said after that, you could do no wrong with this leftist. You could turn around and go all Larry Summers on her and she wouldn’t even bat an eye. You’d be granted a license to diverge from leftist orthodoxies, whereas other leftists and Democrats would be severely punished for the same violations.

Obama is a master at pushing the buttons of the movement leftists, even better than was Hillary’s husband. For the sake of expediency, Obama has continued many of the same policies as the Bush administration. Up to now, he has been able to get away with it without losing his leftist base, although the discontent has been ratcheting up of late. Fortunately for Obama, the Honduras crisis came up at just the right time.

It costs Obama/Clinton relatively little to unfairly denounce the Honduran government. Yes, the administration’s actions might lead to the replacement of a democratic, pro-American, trade-friendly government with a government that is largely under the control of the Chavez axis, but Obama/Clinton figure that is a small price/risk to pay for what they get in return: symbolic leftist “street cred” that will grant the administration a nice infusion of domestic political capital, which is beginning to run low.