The Facepalm Presidency

It's been a long seven months.

But I don't want to talk about that.

Instead, I want to talk about one day in the national news cycle. A day that perfectly defines what Americans have learned about their savior.....er, President....since his inauguration 217 long days ago.

Yesterday.

It began simply enough.

"Nobody is going to make any news" is the promise reported from the Obama camp as the President left to enjoy his vacation up in Martha's Vineyard. Now, we're cynical enough to appreciate the impossibility of this claim. After all, we have to learn what the President is reading and what new tricks his mutt has learned. I'm guessing "go fetch $2 trillion" isn't one of them.

And then it began. One after another. Story after story reinforcing why Americans have quickly forced the President's approval rating to plummet.

• The Department of Energy is using $300 million in stimulus funds for their own "cash-for-refrigerators" program. "Beginning late this fall, the program authorizes rebates of $50 to $200 for purchases of high-efficiency household appliances." Clunkers apparently have an impressive ability to swing the barndoor wide open and let a whole herd of bad ideas run free.

• Next up? The discovery of why the UAW is so happy to send their thugs to Town Hall meetings.They're both talking about a $10-billion provision tucked deep inside thousands of pages of health care overhaul bills that could help the UAW's retiree health-care plan and other union-backed plans. Politics pays.

• Doing their best impersonation of a Monty Python sketch, the White House breaks out The Comfy Chair. President Barack Obama has approved creation of a new, special terrorism-era interrogation unit to be supervised by the White House. Rich Galen, at one time a co-worker of mine, had this to say:

The Obama Administration and the Democrats in Congress have been in a projectile sweat about whether Karl Rove had any influence over the hiring or firing of U.S. Attorneys; the thinking being, if he was in the White House he was always acting and thinking politically. Yet, the Obama White House believes that giving the White House direct control over CIA interrogations will somehow make them more acceptable to the ACLU and the same Democrats in Congress. Bush White House interfering: Bad. Obama White House interfering: Good. What am I missing?

• And, of course, we had the daily "they're spending the stimulus dollars on what?!?!" lesson. The stimulus package is living up to its provocative name by funding a bacchanalia of behavioral sex research, a Post analysis reveals. Idiots.

• We also discovered that Obama political appointees believe they still need to score more points with Code Pink. "The document, released Monday by the Justice Department, says one interrogator said a colleague had told Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that if any other attacks happened in the United States, 'We're going to kill your children.'" My first reaction to this? So what? My second? Absolute disgust that the Obama White House is once again more interested in fighting their own CIA agents than terrorists. Cowards.

• Which brings us to Afghanistan. During the Bush years, we heard of military officers here and there speaking up against the White House. But now we have the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs going to the media in order to bring more attention to Afghanistan since our illustrious President refuses to do so himself. "The situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating along with U.S. public support for the war, Washington's top military officer said on Sunday as he left open the possibility of another increase in troops."

As 3BP contributor Chobemaster said earlier yesterday, "Obama throwing 17k troops into Afghanistan when it takes, say, 27k to get that mission done is egregious. Even if you want to say 'well, Bush did the same thing' and erred on the side of reducing inflammatory presence - OK, let's learn that lesson, then. The same mistake the 2nd time is far worse.

• Finally, we are provided yet another lesson in just how incredibly poorly the government would manage health care with this doozy. "At least 1,200 veterans across the country have been mistakenly told by the Veterans Administration that they suffer from a fatal neurological disease." Not just dumb. Mean.

There you have it.

Seven stories in one day that highlight the crisis in leadership that this country is facing.

And I didn't even bring up health care.


It's been a long seven months.