Pity the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi. Talk about a man who gets no respect. He delivered what I thought was a very good speech at the U.N., and the Times headlined it: “Narendra Modi, in U.N. Speech, Inserts India Into Terrorism Fight.” Inserts? India has been dealing with Islamic terrorism literally since Day 1, and here I mean “literally” in the sense of “literally,” not in the sense Joe Biden uses it. With China on one side and a failed state packed with jihadists and a nuclear arsenal on the other, India does not have to “insert” itself into the major conflicts of our time. History saw to that long before Modi.

After that treatment from the Times, Modi was invited by the White House to “a private dinner” with the president and vice president, during a period in which the prime minister is engaged in a nine-day religious fast, Navratri, a Hindu observance. At other events, Modi’s hosts have had the good taste not to serve food; asked about the White House dinner, State Department spokesman Jen Psaki could only answer: “I don’t have the menu in front of me.”

Remember how these people were supposed to be the epitome of slick? How they were going to rebuild our standing in the world?

I often described Modi’s predecessor, Manmohan Singh, as the leader of the free world. Whether Modi can truly take up that mantle remains to be seen, and will depend a great deal on his economic boldness at home. But in any case, India is a key U.S. ally, one that will be far more important to us in the long term than even our cousins in Great Britain (who have suffered their own share of insults from the Obama administration). As Modi himself put it in the Wall Street Journal: “India and the U.S. have a fundamental stake in each other’s success — for the sake of our values and our many shared interests. That is also the imperative of our partnership. And it will be of great value in advancing peace, security and stability in the Asia and Pacific regions; in the unfinished and urgent task of combating terrorism and extremism; and in securing our seas, cyber space and outer space, all of which now have a profound influence on our daily lives.”

Modi sounds like a man ready to take the U.S.-India relationship forward. The Obama administration, as Jen Psaki so ably demonstrates, can’t even get itself ready for a press conference, much less for serious business.