When he was president, Harry Truman had a sign on his desk that read, “The buck stops here.”
That’s certainly not the case with the person who now occupies the Oval Office. Barack Obama is eager to take credit when anything goes right in this country, even if he has to stretch the truth to the breaking point to do so.
But when things go wrong, as they have in spades since he was elected, no one has been quicker than our evader in chief to put the blame somewhere else. The latest example of this occurred Sunday night during his interview with Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes.
Kroft, who is normally one of the friendliest questioners the president could face, asked how the Muslim extremists who call themselves the Islamic State became so powerful so quickly. “How did they end up where they are in control of so much territory?” Kroft asked the president. “Was that a complete surprise to you?”
The president’s reply made it clear that he wasn’t the one who got it wrong: “Well, I think, our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that, I think, they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria.”
Needless to say, members of the intelligence community are furious at Obama for throwing them under the bus. One former senior Pentagon official has been quoted as saying, “Either the President doesn’t read the intelligence he’s getting or he’s bulls******g.”
It turns out both parts of that statement are true. Of course Obama is giving us the mushroom treatment (“keep ’em in the dark and cover them with manure”). He’s been a master of this sort of obfuscation all of his life.
But now we find out that he also skips most of his intelligence briefings. According to the Government Accountability Institute, which tracks such things, the President attended only 42.43 percent of his intelligence briefings during his first term.
It’s hard to stay on top of things when you’re in a hurry to get on the golf course … or racing off to another Democratic fundraiser.
Even the mainstream media, which have been slavish in their devotion to Obama, have refused to go along with this latest presidential prevarication. Richard Engel, the chief foreign affairs correspondent for NBC, said on the air:
It’s surprising that the president said that U.S. intelligence 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.
Engel wasn’t alone. Many other reporters and publications, including the New York Times, refused to let Obama get away with this one.
There is nothing new, of course, about Obama’s pointing his finger at others, rather than taking responsibility himself. That’s what he did when it became obvious to everyone that the government’s website for Obamacare was an absolute disaster; or when Muslim extremists murdered four Americans, including our ambassador, in Benghazi, Libya; or when it was confirmed that the IRS was harassing and intimidating conservative organizations; or …
But you get the point.
Let’s face it. On issue after issue, Obama isn’t even trying to “lead from behind,” as his most fervent supporters used to claim. The only “leadership” he’s demonstrated here is how to blame others for your own mistakes.
That’s not what we expect of our President, nor is it what the world needs.
Until next time, keep some powder dry.
Chip Wood was the first news editor of The Review of the News and also wrote for American Opinion, our two predecessor publications. He is now the geopolitical editor of Personal Liberty Digest. This article first appeared in PersonalLiberty.com and has been reprinted with permission.
