Josh Kraushaar via National Journal:
In attempting to downplay the political damage from a
slew of second-term controversies, President Obama has counted on the American
people having a very short memory span and a healthy suspension of disbelief.
* AND HE WON HIS BET! HE WAS RE-ELECTED IN 2012!
The time-tested strategy for Obama: Claim he's in the
dark about his own administration's activities, blame the mess on subordinates,
and hope that with the passage of time, all will be forgotten.
(Harry Truman, the president isn't. He's more likely to
pass the buck.)
His latest eyebrow-raiser came on 60 Minutes on Sunday,
when the president blamed the failure to anticipate the rise of ISIS on his
intelligence community for not informing him of the growing threat. "I
think our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged
that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria,"
Obama said.
* BUT OF COURSE CLAPPER HASN'T BEEN FIRED...
(*SNORT*)
* OBAMA BLAMES... OBAMA ABSOLVES...
(*SARCASTICALLY BOWING MY HEAD*)
Most early news reports dutifully pinned the blame on the
intelligence agencies, with the president escaping any further scrutiny.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
But anyone following the news over the past year would
have been better informed than the commander in chief. As NBC foreign affairs
correspondent Richard Engel said on MSNBC Monday: "It's surprising that
the president said that U.S. intelligence missed this one, because it seems
that U.S. intelligence was the only group that missed this one. Everyone knew
that Islamic extremists were on the rise in Syria and in Iraq; it was well
documented. The extremists were publicizing their activities online — they were
bragging about it. Journalists, including us, were interviewing foreign
fighters. This was no state secret."
Former Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania, the
highest-ranking former military officer ever elected to Congress, told National
Journal that the president was wrong to pass the buck. "As commander in
chief, you're accountable. You're the one who is responsible whether the good
ship of state is doing it right," said Sestak, pointing to congressional
testimony from former Defense Intelligence Agency chief Michael Flynn in
February 2014 regarding the growing threat posed by ISIS. "The
administration failed, and the president is the captain of the ship and should
assume accountability."
* OH, PLEASE! WHERE WERE THESE FINE SENTIMENTS WHEN YOU
WERE ACTUALLY A MEMBER OF THE HOUSE?!
Sestak is considering a Pennsylvania Senate bid in 2016...
(*ROLLING MY EYES*)
The president's defenders pointed to a recent David
Ignatius interview with Clapper in The Washington Post, in which the
intelligence chief indeed claimed he provided the White House with evidence of
ISIS's "prowess and capability." At the same time, he also
acknowledged downplaying the enemy's "will to fight" and
overestimating the capabilities of the Iraqi forces. It was an odd admission,
given the long-demonstrated ruthlessness of the extremists in Iraq and Syria,
and the long-reported struggles of Iraq's military. And given the rosy
projections of post-war Iraq during the Bush administration, it's unusual to
hear intelligence agencies making the same mistake twice.
* NO IT'S NOT! THAT'S THE HISTORY OF HISTORY!
(*SNORT*)
Still, it's clear that Obama wasn't blindsided by the
rising threat from Islamic extremists in the Middle East. Outgoing Attorney
General Eric Holder even warned that the emerging threat was "more
frightening than anything" — back in July.
The elements of the administration's blame, deny, and
wait-it-out communications strategy has been front and center amid all the
recent controversies. When the administration badly botched the launch of the
health care exchange website, Obama said he was "not informed directly
that the website would not be working the way it was supposed to."
(This, for his signature achievement in office.)
Blame was later pinned on Health and Human Services
Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who left the administration in April.
When officials at the Internal Revenue Service improperly
targeted conservative outside groups for scrutiny, Obama first feigned outrage,
saying he had "no patience for" the misconduct. But months later, as
the public's anger subsided, Obama said there "wasn't even a smidgen of
corruption" at the agency, and the administration has done little to hold
anyone accountable since.
* YEP! EXACTLY RIGHT! I REMEMBER THAT EXACTLY SAME OBAMA
QUOTE!
After CNN reported that Veterans Affairs Department
offices covered up long wait times at several of its facilities, former Obama
press secretary Jay Carney said, "We learned about them through the [news]
reports."
(*SNORT*)
Long wait times were hardly a secret, with Obama himself
campaigning on VA reform as a candidate. To his credit, Obama [eventually] signed
legislation reforming the VA and replaced embattled Secretary Eric Shinseki.
But the president himself escaped much of the blame, even though he was clearly
familiar with the long-standing problems that the agency faced.
* SOMEHOW I DOUBT THAT THE VA IS AS "REFORMED"
AS THE ABOVE PARAGRAPH WOULD HAVE US BELIEVE.
The administration's approach to controversies was best
crystallized by former National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor, who
deflected criticism about allegations that talking points on the attack on the
U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, were altered for political reasons.
"Dude, this was two years ago," he told Bret Baier of Fox News. The
remarks were perceived as flippant, but they underscored the success of the
administration's public-relations strategy. Buy enough time, and inevitably
problems tend to go away — especially in today's attention-deprived
environment.
* EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU READING THIS WHO INITIALLY
BOUGHT THE ADMINISTRATION'S BULLSHIT ON BENGHAZI AND THEN - EVEN AS MORE AND
MORE PROOF TO THE CONTRARY KEPT GETTING RELEASED - BASICALLY "BOUGHT"
OBAMA'S "RUN OUT THE CLOCK" CRISIS MANAGEMENT PLAN... YOU SHOULD BE
ASHAMED OF YOURSELVES.
The difference between bureaucratic incompetence and not
being fully truthful with the American public is a big one.
* OR AT LEAST IT USED TO BE; STILL IS TO PEOPLE WITH
PRINCIPLES.
(*SHRUG*)
In the aftermath of scandal, it's easy to understand why
the administration, when choosing between portraying the president as
disconnected or dissembling, has chosen the former. But throughout his
presidency, Obama has acted far from detached. In his second term, he's relied
increasingly on loyalists who are less likely to push back against the
president's wishes. It's hard to square a president who reportedly is
micromanaging airstrikes in Syria with a president who was unaware of the
growing threat from Islamic extremists, which had been increasingly trumpeted
on the network news.
"The biggest deficit [in politics now] isn't the
debt. It's the trust deficit in our politics," said Sestak. "A year
or two ago, when the administration signaled it wasn't going to use the
[phrase] 'War on Terror,' that wasn't correct. When they walked away from that,
they suggested to the public we've got this in the bag."
Indeed, at a time of American military conflict, truth in
advertising is especially important. The president has avoided using the word
"war" in describing the conflict with ISIS and new terrorist cells in
Syria, but it's hard to view it any other way. Military advisers have said
ground troops will be necessary to prevail, even as the president continually
rules out that option (most likely because it's politically unpopular). Obama
ridiculed the strength of the moderate Syrian militias just last month in an
interview with The New York Times' Tom Friedman, but now he's praising their
skill after his strategy abruptly changed.
(*ROLLING MY EYES*)
It's understandable that the president was trying to
avoid acknowledging that he personally downplayed the threat from ISIS; as a
sound bite, it would've been politically damaging.
* NO. NO, IT'S REALLY NOT UNDERSTANDABLE.
But it is crucially important, going forward,
that he's brutally honest with both himself and the American people about the
mission. Using campaign-style techniques to deflect criticism from domestic
controversies might be expected from any administration. But when national
security is at stake, politics should stop at the White House's edge.
