Raindrops wash away reeling O’s fake veneer

NY ^ | May 17, 2013 | Michael Goodwin

[COUNTrecount]

Watching President Obama trying to dodge raindrops and responsibility yesterday reminded me of the moment when Dorothy pulls back the curtain and discovers that the Wizard of Oz is “just a man.” Stripped of his spell of mystery and power, the wizard is worse than mortal. He’s a fake.

So it was with Obama in the Rose Garden. His performance was tired and trite, ordinary to the point of dull. His veneer of passion was so transparent that you could see him trying to summon his old-time magic by pushing the buttons and pulling the levers that got him out of tight spots before. “Folks” and “I” and “me” and “my” — stop!

The magic is gone, his act thin enough to say, as he recently did about Benghazi, that “there’s no there there.”

Standing under an umbrella held by a Marine, Obama looked simultaneously imperious and small, no match for the rising tide of scandals swamping his presidency. At a moment that demanded genuine resolve, his answers were evasive, especially about whether he knew the IRS was politically profiling conservative groups. His response, that “I can assure you that I certainly did not know anything about the [inspector general] report,” wasn’t even an artful dodge.

Serious trouble could be ahead if the president can’t give a straight answer to “What did you know and when did you know it?”

Similarly, his attempt to duck the Benghazi fallout by suggesting that Congress didn’t commit enough money for security, was, like his earlier bids to escape responsibility for the attack, preposterous and misleading.

[bert]

Why?

Because his incompetent staff said there would be no rain

The news conference in the rain is metaphor for his whole regime.