Hugh Hewitt | Sep 30, 2014

"[T]he White House just didn't pay attention to it."


That's the succinct summary from "a senior American intelligence official" in this morning's New York Times of why the president is surprised by the rise of ISIS, trying everything to erase his branding of the terrorist army and quasi-state as the jayvees earlier this year.


The "it" in that tart response from the intelligence professional unwilling to serve as scapegoat for the disaster that is ISIS are "classified American intelligence reports [that] painted an increasingly ominous picture of a growing threat from Sunni extremists in Syria." Reports that the president ignored. Our lassitudinous leader has discovered the American public is no longer buying his serial explanation of "nobody told me," and the harsh reaction to his 60 Minutes fiasco from Sundayunderscores that his approach to the presidency has lost its appeal to all but hard core apologists of this charade at 1600.


The "emperor's new clothes" phase of the presidency couldn't come at a worse time for President Obama as voters are even now receiving early absentee ballots for the 2014 midterm elections. This has become a foreign policy election, or more precisely, a referendum on President Obama's handling of America's foreign policy. The battle for the Senate is the proxy for a vote of no confidence in the president, and GOP candidates across the country are benefitting from the collective desire to march into the voting booth and deliver the stiffest rebuff possible to the golfing Commander-in-Chief possible.
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President Obama blamed James Clapper, his Director of National Intelligence, just like he blamed others for the massive failures at the Department of Veterans Affairs and the IRS. Every parent knows the sound of a young child trying to blame "Mr. Nobody", and even adults without children are familiar with the dodges of the unrepentant, petulant child trying hard to avoid responsibility for everything that is broken or amiss he or she has left in their wakes.


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