First, Bush spent his life as an executive. He was a bad executive, but he at least understood the buck stops here concept. Obama has never run anything in his life and has always existed within organizations where responsibility was diffuse. He continues that habit as President rather than embracing his new role.
Second, Obama’s incompetence is very similar to Bush’s. He’s unaware of what is going on in his administration and is more focused on managing the news than in actually dealing with the problems he encounters. The Kerry on the boat thing was only the latest example. They had no good reason to lie about it, but since it looked a little bad, they decided to try anyway.
Uh huh. Say, I’ve been meaning to ask you something. After you so utterly and completely missed the boat when you tried to predict the outcome of the last election, how can you make any pronouncements about current politics? I mean, you so badly misread the mood of the country, and every single indicator about how they were going to vote, what on Earth makes you think your judgement about Obama’s flaws is in any way reliable?
Which Failing by Obama has he ‘blamed his underlings’?
If Obama is responsible for this IRS kerfluffle, the Bush must be responsible for the attack on 09.11.01 in the same way. Bush’s underlings could have connected dots that an attack was coming just like you think Obama should have figured out several management levels lower that some Frickin’ Self Admitted Republican screwed up on some paperwork functions.
Why did Bush’s approval go up so fast after America got hit with such a massive attack on innocent civilians and innocent Military people working at the Pentagon?
The seriousness of the wrongdoing of not connecting dots for 9.11.01 appears to me to be much worse than what happened at the IRS. ITs way worse in number of lives lost than Benghazi… yet for Obama it’s Scandal Scandal Scandal whenever anything goes wrong.
And then when Obama’s leadership gets Osama’s dead body sent to the bottom of the sea, it’s Bush gets the credit because he tortured somebody and nearly a decade later that was supposed to be the source for the break in the search for that mastermind of 9.11. What is up with all this?
The flaws in your reasoning are numerous. First, I got one thing wrong. Second, I didn’t get it as spectacularly wrong as you say, I only got the result wrong. I said pretty clearly that if the polls weren’t skewed, then that meant unprecedented levels of minority turnout. Which ended up happening. My complaint at the time was that the pollsters were so not confident in their results that they weren’t willing to report their assumptions as the big story it was. When conservative commentators questioned pollsters on those assumptions, they begged off. So it’s not like the idea of skewed polls just came out of fantasyland.
Finally, my judgment about Obama’s flaws has been echoed not just by conservative commentators, but liberal and neutral as well. It’s not like I’m the only person in the world who sees that the buck never stops with him. The words Dana Milbank used were, “A bystander in his own administration”.
The attack is something that happened from the outside. the IRS scandal was something that happened on the inside. That being said, it was not a fringe argument for liberals to say that 9/11 was a result of his incompetence. And there was some merit to it, although given what we know now, it’s likely that any administration would have missed the signs. After all, under Obama, we’ve had massive surveillance programs that have successfully identified terrorists, and then we’ve brought them in, let them go, and then they committed attacks.
That’s because you’re making the simple connection of “Obama was President, Osama died” as the be all and end all of the situation, while seeking greater nuance when things go wrong under him. The fact is, the Osama situation was also an example of Obama’s indecisiveness. Clinton ended up being his spine, convincing him to not cancel the operation a third time.
I’d say the denial is in avoiding the message by finding flaws with the messenger, rather than trying to refute me by demonstrating Obama’s competence. Good luck with that, there’s been many books written about his administration, none of which show a particularly talented leader other than his ability to give speeches.
When were either ID’d as terrorists by our massive surveillance programs?
Tsarnaev was asked to be checked out by the Russian Government … he was not brought in and then let go. They never found a link to terrorism at the time.
Hasan… Was in the US Military… detecting a potential problem if true is not the same as having a massive surveillance program that identified him as a terrorist and then you brought him in’ and then let him go.
Isn’t that what you were claiming?
Bush either blamed others, let others accept the blame for, or simply tried to personally publicly ignore, oh, (nearly) every fucking scandalous thing his administration was involved in. And I only say “nearly” because I’m not omnipotent and can’t remember if maybe he did take the blame for, say, feeling up a foreign potentate or something like that.
Sorry, I was sloppy in my argument again. The surveillance programs didn’t flag these guys. My point was that even with the ability to connect the dots, we don’t do anything about it.
Hasn’t John Mace sort of railroaded this discussion into the thickets of irrelevant detail?
The point of the OP, as I read it, isn’t that Obama turned out not to be involved. The point is the wider one that there is no scandal at all, at least, no left/right political scandal. Some people in the IRS made a mistake, but not a scandalous one that disproportionately affects people of any particular political stripe. That’s the story here–the story that somehow the IRS was targeting conservative groups, with or without Obama’s blessing, under or not under his oversight, turns out to be false from the get go.
Actually, that’s wrong. Werfel made a rather lame attempt to help his boss out with a really bad lie.
It’s true that progressive groups were on the BOLO list, but it was left up to Cincinnati’s discretion whether to approve such groups, and progressive groups sailed through the process with no problems. Tea Party applications, meanwhile, had to be forwarded to DC, where they were held up for years.
Basically, Werfel went looking for something exculpatory and that was the best he could find.
Ah, I see, assuming bad motives should only be done to Republicans. Danny Werfel was obviously trying to get to the bottom of the scandal after the IG and the IRS had failed. Obama is lucky to have such a brilliant administrator at his disposal.
And it’s hardly over. Lois Lerner is negotiating immunity in exchange for her testimony. Maybe she can tell us, finally, who ordered the targeting, since Shulman didn’t fell like telling Congress.