Today’s Impromptus is the usual smorgasbord, maybe even more smorgasbordy than usual. I have an item concerning Obama and Netanyahu — and would like to add something here in the Corner.

After the Israeli prime minister’s recent meeting with the president in the Oval Office, the White House issued a warning to Israel. Now, as George Shultz liked to point out, the White House can’t talk: It’s a building. Who issued the warning? The presidential press secretary. (The State Department’s spokeswoman did her part too.)

The warning went like this: If you, Israel, proceed with your housing plan for Jerusalem, you will block peace, and we will blame you and condemn you.

Bob Schieffer of CBS News spoke with Netanyahu about this issue, citing the “sharp rebuke” Israel had received after Netanyahu left the Oval Office. “Well, first of all, I had a very good meeting with the president,” said Netanyahu, “and I was baffled by this statement — because it doesn’t reflect American values. What we’re being criticized for is that some Jewish residents of Jerusalem bought apartments legally from Arabs in a predominantly Arab neighborhood, and this is seen as a terrible thing.

“You know, Arabs in East Jerusalem, Palestinians, buy apartments, thousands of them, in the Jewish neighborhoods in West Jerusalem. Nobody says, ‘You can’t do it.’ If I said to you, in some place in the United States, ‘Jews cannot buy apartments here,’ there’d be an uproar. I don’t accept this thing.

“I mean, Jews can buy private homes in Arab neighborhoods and Arabs can buy private homes in Jewish neighborhoods — it’s their right.”

Again, “I was absolutely baffled by this. It is against American values, and it doesn’t bode well for peace. To hear that we’d have this ethnic purification as a condition for peace — I think it’s anti-peace. I think it works against peace. And I don’t think it’s a principle that should be condoned. It should be condemned.”

Later in his discussion with Schieffer, Netanyahu said, “What is this affront to peace? Why can’t Jews and Arabs live together?” He said the administration’s criticism was wrong. Furthermore, “I think it’s not the American Way.”

Well. It takes chutzpah for a foreign leader — even one who lived in America for years — to criticize an American administration as un-American. But without chutzpah, Israel would not exist at all.

Netanyahu spoke of “American values” and “the American Way.” Who is he to talk? The administration, in the person of the press secretary, was really put out by this.

But here is a different question: Who’s right, or more right? Netanyahu or Obama? I think Netanyahu is, actually. A certain kind of American Right has a word for people like me: “Israel Firster.” It may well be that I like Netanyahu’s conception of America better than I do Obama’s, or John Kerry’s, or Jimmy Carter’s.

Michael Moore is an American and I’m an American. In fact, we’re both from Michigan! That does not mean I have more in common with Michael Moore than I do with Benjamin Netanyahu (or Václav Klaus or Hernando de Soto).

Speaking of American greats, Netanyahu’s line about “ethnic purification” reminded me of Carter — who, running for president in 1976, defended the “ethnic purity” of neighborhoods against busing policies. It was considered the gaffe of the campaign — until President Ford spoke about Poland in the debates.

Maybe Carter could lecture Netanyahu on the importance of ethnic purity? Maybe Obama’s policy on Jerusalem could have “ethnic purity” as its slogan?

P.S. Still on the subject of American greats, let me say something about Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Alison Lundergan Grimes. In Impromptus, I write, “Alison Lundergan Grimes has a strikingly musical name, doesn’t she? Actually, it’s kind of a sing-song name. ‘Alison Lundergan Grimes’ reminds me of ‘Tinker to Evers to Chance.’”

It also reminds me of FDR’s rollicking putdown: “Martin, Barton, and Fish.” Republicans, in turn, should have had fun with “Franklin Delano Roosevelt.” I’m not an expert on the period, but maybe it was a missed opportunity?

P.P.S. At the 2004 Democratic convention, Jimmy Carter asked Michael Moore to sit with him in the presidential box. Carter said there was no one else he would rather sit with. This tells you something about the 39th president, the Democratic party, and some other things.