The launch of the Affordable Care Act and the worsening of conditions at the Veterans Affairs Department are emblematic of Obama's inattention to the hard work of governing. He is slow to fire poor-serving Cabinet members and quick to dismiss controversies as "phony scandals." To the Obama administration, transparency is a mere talking point. The great irony of his progressive presidency: Democrats privately admit that Obama has done as much to undermine the public's faith in government as his GOP predecessor.
Green Lantern? (Honestly, I'm not up to going into that defense of the president. You're on your own.)
No, he's Irony Man, who boasted of a non-ideological, pragmatic administration focused like a laser beam on competence yet finds himself pushing left wing positions and unable to govern even when his team designs and runs the programs it is fouling up.
Overseas, as the president alienates friends, we'll soon have the Just Us League, I suppose.
It's just about come to this:
Really. It isn't the president's fault. He swears to God.
UPDATE: The competence! It burns!
The CIA’s top officer in Kabul was exposed Saturday by the White House when his name was inadvertently included on a list provided to news organizations of senior U.S. officials participating in President Obama’s surprise visit with U.S. troops.
And then the reporter matches that competence:
The disclosure marked a rare instance in which a CIA officer working overseas had his cover — the secrecy meant to protect his actual identity — pierced by his own government. The only other recent case came under significantly different circumstances, when former CIA operative Valerie Plame was exposed as officials of the George W. Bush administration sought to discredit her husband, a former ambassador and fierce critic of the decision to invade Iraq.
No. Richard Armitage exposed Plame--who was a desk officer rather than a field agent. And Armitage worked for Secretary of State Powell--who at that point could not be counted as someone who would want to discredit an opponent of the Iraq War.
Yet "Scooter" Libby is the one who went to jail for the incident even though he had nothing to do with the "outing."
And through all of it, nobody asked the question I wanted answered: just who sent the buffoon Wilson to Niger on such an important mission?
As the reporter did admit, there were significantly different circumstances. Pity he didn't even remotely make that clear.
In fact, the trumped up Plame Affair was about getting Bush and not about getting Wilson--or Plame.
Irony Man strikes again.
