Stephen Hayes, an investigative reporter for The Weekly Standard, reports that Obama Administration scandals around war-on-terror intelligence are nothing new:

Readers of this magazine are familiar with the story of the documents obtained in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. The Sensitive Site Exploitation team on the raid collected more than a million documents​—​papers, computer hard drives, audio and video recordings. Top Obama administration officials at first touted the cache as the greatest collection of terrorist materials ever captured in a single raid and boasted that the contents would fill a “small college library.” An interagency intelligence team, led by the CIA, conducted the initial triage​—​including keyword searches of the collection for actionable intelligence. And then, according to senior U.S. intelligence officials with firsthand knowledge of the controversy, the documents sat largely untouched for as long as a year. The CIA retained “executive authority” over the documents, and when analysts from other agencies requested access to them, the CIA denied it​—​repeatedly.

After a bitter interagency dispute, James Clapper, director of national intelligence, allowed analysts from CENTCOM and the Defense Intelligence Agency to have time-limited, read-only access to the documents. What they found was fascinating and alarming. Much of what these analysts were seeing​—​directly from Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders​—​contradicted what the president and top administration officials were saying publicly.

The issue has bubbled up, again, because “more than 50 intelligence analysis” have come forward with complaints that their findings have been altered somewhere high up the chain of command.  Want to bet more Americans know that Donald Trump made fun of a disabled reporter than that some higher-ups in the president’s administration appear to have modified intelligence and stonewalled analysts for the sake of the president’s reelection campaign?

Political bias is clearly in play when it comes to what stories mainstream journalists pursue and how they frame them, but some of the blame falls on the market, as well.  A great number of people have voted for Barack Obama, and the more decisively he proves to be an ideological and functionally incompetent charlatan, the less they’d be inclined to pay attention to his performance.  Meanwhile, others have now more than once been through the exhausting process of learning about some major scandal, fighting back against the mainstream spin and public incredulity, and watching the whole thing fade into the surge of another scandal.

So, the country has pretty much settled into an understanding that the president is a terrible amplifier of an untrustworthy government, and that it’s ultimately voters’ fault.  People don’t want the blame, and they don’t want to change the unhealthy impulses that will inevitably lead to our current political condition.  The attitude is therefore to turn away while the bumbler-in-chief finishes out his term and just hope for something better next time around.

That would certainly fit Pew poll results showing only 19% trust in government and only 34% trust in the general public, but a majority still want the government to do things for them.

Last night, I received a little push-back on Twitter to my reaction to the attacks in Paris, specifically President Obama’s comments thereon.  By Obama standards, the commentary wasn’t that bad.  His bar is so low it’s on the ground, of course, but he managed to refer to himself fewer than a dozen times in the 500 words, and at least he didn’t deny that Islamic terrorism was behind the attacks; he just sidestepped the perpetrators altogether.

The problem is that he’s just so weak, and the world is as it is in large part because of his weakness.  (Whether it’s deliberate is another subject.)  He came into office and traveled the world to point a finger of blame at his own country.  He cashed in a victory in Iraq for electoral gain and thereby precipitated much of what followed.  His actions in Afghanistan have been less than impressive, his administration (with Hillary Clinton) turned Libya to (even greater) turmoil, he helped foment unrest in countries like Egypt, while knocking the wind out of it in Iran, where it might have turned things for the better.  His fecklessness in Syria drew that country toward its calamity, and his timidness against Russia has invited that country to press for advantage.

That’s before we get to domestic politics, where open borders have drawn masses of untraceable, low-skilled people into our stagnant economy (which his policies have helped to keep stagnant), and his strategy of fomenting divisions along lines of identity politics (especially race) has weakened us as a nation.  And don’t forget the observation that he’s used taxpayer dollars to make it boom-time for left-wing activists while the bureaucracy under him directly attacks his opponents and imposes policies across the board that erode freedom and opportunity.

All of this leaves us extremely vulnerable.

On the national security front, the two options are to attack the terrorists’ infrastructure in their home countries, thus drawing the fighters back to that land, over there, or to build our own defenses and attempt to identify, trace, and neutralize them on our land, over here.  President Obama apparently lacks the will and clearly lacks the credibility to attack over there, and in any event, it likely aligns with his domestic goals to increase the reach and invasiveness of the government among its own people.

At this point, however, the country is so divided and distrustful of itself and the government that a dragnet sufficient to stop the largest attacks (but never all of them) is sure to fray as Americans resist it.  Meanwhile, the enemy is inside the gates and proclaiming, “The American blood is best, and we will taste it soon.”

It takes a great deal of inanity to get the world to a precipice like this, and another year of this president promises only more inanity.