Barack the Bumbler

If there was any doubt that our president lacks the skills to lead the country, it has now vanished.

Recent actions by him or his staff have removed that doubt. He is losing support from even staunch supporters. The media is no longer providing cover. Worse, the comedy shows now see fit to mock him.

If you don’t believe me, just check any news outlet, even the White House news agency NBC. While I won’t cite factual incidents here, it is because of space limitations and not lack of data unlike liberal columnists who decry opinion and conjecture unless it is their own.

This has been coming for some time. Now that the media is no longer covering for him we can clearly see that the emperor has no clothes. They have finally figured out that he is leading from behind, the usual position of someone who as a senator rarely showed up to vote on anything controversial.

The latest blunder, and one that has turned many supporters cold, is the trade of five senior terrorists for one soldier, Bowe Bergdahl. This is so rife with problems I am simply going to refer you to any news source for them, but there is something hidden in this trade. Suffice it to say that experience as a community organizer apparently did not include negotiations. But all is not lost. He surely has heard about the problems with this trade on the news.

I think the slide started with his Obamacare lies being exposed loudly and often. Before that he was able to keep attention off of his many scandals and failures. Here are a few. During his campaign there were questions about his birth certificate and U.S. citizenship. While this is now a moot point, he is probably the only U.S. president to attend a U.S. college on a foreign student assistance program.

The scandals include Fast and Furious, where the government sold guns to Mexican cartels to try to frame the U.S. firearms industry and resulted in the death of a Border Patrol agent; the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, rife with shovel-ready projects that by Obama’s admission weren’t really shovel-ready; and the General Motors bailout that negated 200 years of contract law and threw GM bondholders under the bus.

How about the NSA surveillance scandal? What about Benghazi? The IRS scandal is still much in the minds of some. Congressional hearings on these issues has met with nothing but delays and obfuscation. Remember Obama’s promise of the most transparent administration ever? That is right up there with “If you like your plan you can keep it.”

The likelihood of these ever being investigated by independent counsel is remote since the fox, Attorney General Eric Holder, is never going to allow that to happen. I suspect his fingerprints are all over most of these.

Russian President Putin is regularly poking him and getting away with it. He has alienated Israel to the dismay of those knowledgeable in foreign policy.

His foreign policy consists of apology for America’s greatness and kowtowing to foreign despots. He is gutting our military to the point that we have no position of strength to bargain from. He believes that Americans are tired of war. That may be true, at least until we are attacked again. There is a high likelihood that one of the released terrorists will be behind the next attack.

Most recently is the VA scandal. Obama doesn’t bear all the blame for this one, but if you like the VA health care system, you will love Obamacare. It does serve to cover up the fact that illegal immigrants get better care than veterans. It also obscures the recent executive order that give the EPA unprecedented oversight into coal emissions and farm irrigation water.

Obama is being attacked from all sides and doesn’t know how to deal with it. That is no great surprise for someone who is driven by ideology. His leftist view that everyone should see things as he does and surrounding himself with like thinkers is clouding his perception of America.

Obama has essentially sidelined Congress with a little help from Harry Reid through executive order and deliberate ignorance of the Constitution and law. He has changed more enacted law by executive order than any other president. But the downside to that, as he is finding out, is that when you act as the anointed leader, there is no one to blame when things go bad. Happy Friday the Thirteenth.

Tom Riggins is an LVN columnist.