We’ve known for a while , but it bears repeating: Obama is monumentally incompetent

**Posted by Phineas

"No big words, please"
A winning smile isn’t enough.

Writing at Commentary after Obama’s pathetic press appearance yesterday on the VA scandal, Peter Wehner wrote on the administration’s overarching theme, what future generations may most remember it for: epic incompetence. Looking first at his domestic and then his foreign failures, Wehner sums up with the Veteran’s Administration scandal:

More and more Mr. Obama speaks as if he’s a passive actor, a bystander in his own administration, an MSNBC commentator speaking about events he has no real control over. We saw that earlier today, when the president, in trying to address the public’s growing outrage at what’s happening at the VA, insisted he β€œwill not stand for it” and β€œwill not tolerate” what he has stood for and tolerated for almost six years. His anger at what’s happening to our veterans seems to have coincided with the political damage it is now causing him.

We’ve learned the hard way that Mr. Obama’s skill sets are far more oriented toward community organizing than they are to governing. On every front, he is overmatched by events. It’s painful to watch a man who is so obviously in over his head. And more and more Americans are suffering because of it.

In fact, Obama’s responses to the various crises and challenges of his time in office have been right in line with the modern progressiveΒ vision for the nation: we are all victims, even the President:

In his speech on the VA, the president said that he would not stand for things that he clearly and undeniably has stood for some years now, and swore that he would not tolerate that which has has been tolerating since 2009.

He’s been described as acting like a bystander to his own presidency, but it’s more like he’s a victim of it, as though the presidency were this terrible thing that just happened to him one day that he’s now courageously dealing with.

(…)

It’s a remarkable talent he has. When he was getting beat up politically for his association with that goofy racist clergyman, he lectured us on the evils of racism, as though we’d been the ones sitting in on those hateful sermons. Every time he has some spectacular screw-up, which seems to be about once a quarter, he pronounces himself outraged, as though he had not failed us but had been failed himself.

“It’s not me. It’s you.”

In his Morning Jolt newsletter, Jim Geraghty (sorry, no link available) wishes Wehner had expanded on his essay in more depth and himself offers many more examples of Obama’s failings in office, but one in particular strikes me as the reason for all the rest:

A Focus on What Matters Most: Β His own staffers have described him as “impatient and disengaged” in key meetings, and the intelligence community has wondered how closely he reads his briefings. With increasing frequency, he says he learns about problems within his own administration from media reports. (See the NRCC’s new “Obama Excuses” page.) He really enjoys the good life of the presidency and doesn’t see any reason why he should limit public expenditures on himself and his family during hard economic times. He recently laughed, “That’s the good thing about being president, I can do whatever I want.

Translation:Β Color me shocked that a narcissist can’t see beyond himself.

Moments like these make me ask a question I never thought I’d ask: “Would Joe Biden really be all that bad?”

Of course, like I said in the subject line, we’ve known since about 2007 that Obama was unqualified to be president, though I think many of us were surprised by the depth and breadth of his incompetence. And he has more than two years left to impress us even more!

Yay?

It took a perfect storm of circumstances, including, but not limited to, an economic crisis, the desire of many to “make history” by electing the first Black president, and anΒ MSMΒ that was almost wholly the media arm of the Democratic Party, in order to put this bumbler in office. I’d like to think that won’t happen again anytime soon, and there’s some evidence that some folks are learning from the recent past, but one never knows until the day after election day.

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

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