Richard Cohen (Washingtonpost.com)
”The Rose Garden production sticks in my craw – Obama leaving with his arms around Bergdahl’s mother and father. So touching. So warm. So utterly repellent!” – Richard Cohen, Washington Post columnist
For the past five years I have been writing about a president – Barack Obama, of course – who is in over his head on domestic issues and the economy; national security, foreign policy and on defense.
We have seen his incompetence, lack of judgment, open flouting of the rule of law and the constitution and a disregard for the culture of corruption evidenced within his administration.
The latest Gallop Poll reveals that 74 per cent of Americans express dissatisfaction with the way things are going in the United States at this time, and Real Clear Politics, with its average of all major polls, reflects a 52.5 per cent disapproval of President Obama’s job performance.
Over the past few weeks we have again witnessed his ineptness and that of those around him. With the media showing clips of him promising process improvements for vets dating back to 2008, the president couldn’t pass this off as another phony scandal.
Just as when he faced the failure of Kathleen Sebelius as HHS Secretary, he demonstrated an inability to fire Gen. Eric Shinseki as VA chief. A Washington Post poll revealed that 79 per cent of Americans blame the scandal, at least in part, on Obama’s mismanagement and that George W, Bush was better at “getting things done.”
Hours after Shinseki’s resignation, the President secretly flew to Afghanistan for a four-hour visit with the troops. Obviously planned to show how much he cares for the military, but even that event was marred by the White House release of the name of the CIA station chief.
Then it was on to West Point where he spoke to graduating cadets about his personal burden as a wartime leader, saying he was haunted by the dead and wounded among troops he sent to Afghanistan. Was this his response to those who have criticized his leadership?
For decades America and its presidents valued military power as a deterrent to war, particularly evident during the cold war. Not so with the current administration, where rhetoric supplants military strength and action.
President Obama arm and arm with the Bergdahl’s. (nypost.com)
“Those who suggest that America is in decline, or has seen its global leadership slip away, are either misreading history or engaged in partisan politics,” said the president who has been known to do the latter.
The president’s desire to score political points was again evident when he decided to make an appearance in the Rose Garden to announce the exchange of five terrorists formerly held at Guantanamo for Sgt. Bowe Berghahl. What a mistake, I thought, as I watched him walking walk away with his arms around Bergdahl’s parents.
It didn’t take long for the event to backfire. Most telling was the reaction by the left-leaning Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, quoted at the beginning of this post. Cohen pondered whether the president knew their son was accused of desertion, and asked, “Did he care?”
Susan Rice (CNN photo)
“I am even more bothered, though, that the president and his incautious mouthpiece Susan Rice – she said Bergdahl served ‘with honor and distinction’ – turned what had to be a sordid but necessary deal into a virtual patriotic exercise. It was fundamentally a lie. It was frankly sickening,” wrote Cohen. I couldn’t have said it better.
While I have referred to the president and his staff as inept and incapable, Cohen chose a facetious view of the Bergdahl release, saying “the Obama administration’s mismanagement of this event truly has to be a personal best for the president and his staff.”
Frankly, 2016 cannot come soon enough.
