The Buck Stops Nowhere

Conservative commentator, Charles Krauthammer, noted that Barack Obama (with significant help from his trained media hamsters) has dodged any culpabilty for the scandals that plague his administration. Krauthammer said that under this president, "The buck stops nowhere."

Today, in a scathing editorial in the Washington Times, the editors write:

Has there ever been a president in the history of America who knew less than President Obama?

With each new crisis and scandal, Mr. Obama tells Americans that he just didn’t know.

He didn’t know the Veterans Administration was letting America’s veterans languish and die unattended — he learned about it in the newspaper.

He didn’t know the Justice Department was trolling phone records of members of the U.S. media. He didn’t know the ATF was running guns into Mexico; didn’t know the NSA was spying on the German chancellor; didn’t know the Obamacare website was a disaster; didn’t know the IRS was targeting conservative groups.

With every scandal, the president — the CEO of the United States, if you will — said he first learned about it in the papers. If he were head of Apple or IBM, he’d have been fired years ago, because in business, it’s your job to know, and ignorance is, frankly, even worse than failing. Fail = fired.

Each time Mr. Obama is faced with a scandal, he does three things: First, he expresses outrage (he is, after all, a man only of words, not deeds); then, he blames his predecessor, George W. Bush; finally, he wraps the entire mess up in bureaucratic red tape — a blue-ribbon investigation.

That last move, Mr. Obama’s go-to dodge, does two things: No one, not even the president himself, can speak on the matter (“It’s under investigation and we should hold off on any … “); And second, a lengthy probe means Americans will be distracted and move on by the time any final finding is reached.

If this president were a Republican or even a more moderate Democrat, the drum beat from the media would be deafening. One scandal is bad enough, but with Barack Obama there are at least six legitimate scandals. One, the IRS scandal, is far worse that Watergate, and others have resulted in gun-running and deaths (Fast and Furious), the death of the US Ambassador and others (Benghazi), uncontrolled spying on American citizens (NSA), targeting the media (the James Rosen and AP case), the waste of billions in taxpayer money (the Obamacare website), and the latest, the VA scandal.

As the editors of the Washington Times note, the administration's response is obfuscation at first, followed by hardcore stonewalling when they are pressed. We do not have answers in any of these scandals and no one—absolutely no one—has been held to account. It's a travesty.