Obama: the Buck Doesn't Stop Here

By Ben Shapiro

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

 

This week saw the utter implosion of the Obama second term. First, a hearing for whistleblowers over the Benghazi terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2012, revealed that the White House had failed in their duty to provide security to Americans on the ground in Libya. Then, ABC News reported that the Obama administration had manipulated talking points to minimize the organized nature of the terror attacks. The Obama administration's response: "sideshow!"

 

Next, the Internal Revenue Service acknowledged that during the 2012 election cycle, it gave heightened scrutiny to non-profit applicants who happened to have the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their titles. The media quickly reported that the discrimination went deeper than that: Any group that wanted smaller government, pushed Constitutional education or even wanted to improve quality-of-life found itself under the IRS microscope. Then, it turned out that the IRS hadn't merely been targeting conservative groups -- it had been targeting Jewish groups that didn't meet the Obama administration's foreign policy criteria of being ambivalent about the state of Israel. The Obama administration's response: "low-level staffers!"

 

Finally, the DOJ admitted that for two months, it had been secretly grabbing telephone records for reporters and editors at the Associated Press. The head of the Associated Press called the action "a massive and unprecedented intrusion." The Obama administration's response: "shocking!"

 

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has now morphed into Sgt. Schultz from "Hogan's Heroes": "I know nothing! I hear nothing! I see nothing!" As David Freddoso of the Washington Examiner aptly tweeted, "Once again, Seal Team 6 is the only agency Obama actually runs."

 

This is the legacy of the Obama administration: blaming everyone else. It began with Bush. Then it became Congressional Republicans. Now it's everybody within the Obama administration with the sole exception of the President. Michelle Obama is only moments away from being thrown under the bus should anything happen inside her "Let's Move" program.

 

To call this unpresidential would be the understatement of the year. It is cowardly. Obama has spent his entire career leading from behind then jumping forward to take credit when things go right. He drafted off the Bush administration's anti-terror policies to find and kill Osama Bin Laden, then he ran his re-election campaign on that kill as his entire foreign policy. He tried to crush small business then claimed credit for the jobs they created in spite of his policies.

 

And when things go wrong, Obama ensures he is far out of the line of fire. He spent most of this week mumbling about how horrible and "cynical" Republicans were, as though Mitt Romney were responsible for four dead Americans in Benghazi, John Boehner were responsible for IRS malfeasance and Ted Cruz were to blame for his attorney general's spying on journalists. Of course Obama himself didn't take any blame -- he was too busy hanging with Harvey Weinstein in New York City to fundraise for 2014, just as he was too busy prepping for a Las Vegas fundraiser in 2012 to bother getting involved in the seven-hour terror attack in Benghazi.

 

It's always everybody else's fault for this president.

 

Which means that he can't be trusted. His entire presidency has rested on the pitch that Americans should trust him. If he hasn't created jobs, that's because he hasn't had enough power to do so -- trust him with more power, and he'll take care of you. If he hasn't lowered healthcare costs, that's because Obamacare hasn't been fully implemented by that discriminatory IRS -- trust him with more power, and he'll make sure you're cared for. If the entire Middle East has been transformed into a Muslim Brotherhood hotbed, that's because Obama hasn't had bipartisan support for his foreign policy -- elect him a Congressional majority in 2014, and he'll fix the problem.

 

He has no credibility to do any of that, however. Even if the American people were to embrace his policies, there is no guarantee he'd be in control of the agencies charged with implementing them. After all, he's been an absentee landlord for the entire executive branch for five years now.

 

Unless he is to blame. In which case we have a far more serious problem than incompetence.