The Know-Nothing President

Last week, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein, announced that President Obama didn’t know the United States was collecting communications data of allied leaders. In other words, Sen. Feinstein is suggesting that our intelligence agencies do not clue in the President to what sort of intelligence the United States government is gathering. Let that one sink in for a sec. 

Sen. Feinstein is claiming that the President of the United States was unaware of his executive branch intelligence agencies spying on fellow heads of state. That’s akin to openly acknowledging that the President’s subordinates act without his approval, rendering the Obama Presidency either completely ignorant or hopelessly impotent.  

Entertaining the idea that the man in charge of the United States’ security and relationships with our allied nations would be unaware that his subordinates are spying on allied world leaders can be nothing but a lie concocted to protect the President from the political fallout of his administration’s abusive overreach. 

Worse is that this not some one-time freak incident where supposedly a rogue administrator acted without President Obama’s authorization, but rather this incident is the continuation of a disturbing trend of “Oops, ughhh…I didn’t know about that” moments throughout his presidency.  

All presidents’ administrations tend to leave their bosses some room for plausible deniability, but either Barrack Obama is the most out-of-the-loop Chief Executive in our history, or he needs to start taking some notes during all of those meetings he’s pictured in:

Let’s review his more prominent “I dunno” moments from the past few years:

  • Apparently no one thought to tell the President that healthcare.gov had failed its preliminary testing before its launch. If they had, he might not have said: “You can go to the website. You can check it out… You can sign up next week. You can sign up next month…See for yourself what the prices are. See for yourself what the choices are.”- President Obama, 9/26/13.  
  • The IRS was apparently targeting Tea-Party groups all by itself because the President didn’t know about a report detailing the malicious targeting of liberty-minded groups. If that report hadn’t been “leaked” would anyone have told him? 
  • The White House also had no idea that the DOJ seized the phone records of Associated Press reporters. I guess Eric Holder was just making sure the mainstream media keep saying nice things about his boss. 
  • Jay Carney claimed that the President found out about Operation Fast and Furious through the media. Presumably this was the face he made when he saw the news reports: 
  • President Obama wasn’t informed of an FBI investigation into Gen. David Petraeus’ email account until just two days before Election Day 2012, whereas Eric Holder knew months beforehand (he seems to know everything the President doesn’t). Since the President apparently isn’t keeping track of the DOJ, the IRS, or the NSA, it would actually make sense that he wouldn’t know what the FBI is up to. 
  • And of course, the President seemed surprised to find that after implementing the “Stimulus,” there were no “shovel-ready jobs.” I personally blame that one on his ignorance of basic economics. He should take the time to sit through FreedomWorks University’s econ 101 lectures.

Perhaps the President should spent more time with his cabinet and less time on the golf course, just to avoid appearing so dazzlingly ignorant of his administration’s operations. Then again, all the evidence indicates that meetings the President does attend tend to go like this: 

 

Hey, I just had a thought. If the President is really left in the dark so often, maybe he actually believed people could keep their health insurance plans under Obamacare? It just might be possible that no one in his administration had the heart to tell him the truth, just like they lied to the American people. Right?

Nope.