The answer has become cliche. It's the same one he gave about the IRS abuses, about the VA scandal, about Fast and Furious . . . it's Obama's go-to answer whenever he needs to appear gloriously out of the loop. The least attentive executive in the history of management wouldn't know a thing going on in his own administration if he didn't hear about it on the news. And the fact that the answer has become so widely mocked and ridiculed - and yet he still gives it - tells you that he doesn't think it matters much that so many people know he's BSing.
So, Mr. President, how did you first learn that Hillary was using a private e-mail server for all her official correspondence as Secretary of State? Of course:
President Obama only learned of Hillary Clinton's private email address use for official State Department business after a New York Times report, he told CBS News in an interview.
CBS News senior White House correspondent Bill Plante asked Mr. Obama when he learned about her private email system after his Saturday appearance in Selma, Alabama.
"The same time everybody else learned it through news reports," the president told Plante.
Mr. Obama's comments follow a long week of media scrutiny surrounding Hillary Clinton's private email address and the "home-brewed" server that hosted it.
"The policy of my administration is to encourage transparency, which is why my emails, the BlackBerry I carry around, all those records are available and archived," Mr. Obama said. "I'm glad that Hillary's instructed that those emails about official business need to be disclosed."
A couple things about this:
First, that last quote is telling, because Obama is essentially getting on board with Hillary's BS about how, hey, she wants her e-mails out and thus she's instructed the State Department to release them! Not only does Hillary know that's nonsense - since they can only release the e-mails she gives them, and she picks and chooses those - but even media as Democrat-friendly as MSNBC ripped Hillary for insulting everyone's intelligence by saying it. When you've got an attempted dodge that's clearly not flying, and yet Obama repeats it anyway, that shows you that he's got nothing either.
Which leads me to wonder why he doesn't choose instead to approach this for once as a serious leader. If he really didn't know and just found out about it from the media, why not do what a real CEO would do and make it clear that a) this is not acceptable; and b) he is going to insist that Hillary give the State Department access to everything on her e-mail server without filtering it; and c) whoever know about this and did nothing is going to be held accountable for it?
That is the only way he functions as a strong leader here. By saying what he said - well, hey, I'm so glad Hillary wants us to release the ones she said it's OK to release - he shows himself to be his usual spineless self. One of your cabinet members blatantly violated at least policy and possibly the law for four years, and even now isn't really coming clean, and all you have to say about it is this?
Now I understand the answer is politics. If Obama really goes after Hillary as a responsible leader would and should, he damages her politically and undermines the Democrats' only real hope in 2016. But are the politics of this so obvious that no one even considers it worth mentioning that he's doing a horrible job as leader of the executive branch for the purpose of the politics?
Because someone should point that out, and Obama should be made to answer for it. But they won't, and he won't.
