Obama votes "absent" on national security

How big a deal is it that President Obama skips more than 50% of his daily intelligence meetings?

President Obama is touting his foreign policy experience on the campaign trail, but startling new statistics suggest that national security has not necessarily been the personal priority the president makes it out to be. It turns out that more than half the time, the commander in chief does not attend his daily intelligence meeting...

During his first 1,225 days in office, Obama attended his PDB [Presidential Daily Brief] just 536 times — or 43.8 percent of the time. During 2011 and the first half of 2012, his attendance became even less frequent — falling to just over 38 percent. By contrast, Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush almost never missed his daily intelligence meeting. 

This seems like a big deal to me, and indicative of a Commander in Chief who isn't very engaged in being Commander in Chief, particularly considering that we are at war. But Obama's National Security Council spokesman says the meetings aren't all that important.

Vietor did not dispute the numbers, but said the fact that the president, during a time of war, does not attend his daily intelligence meeting on a daily basis is “not particularly interesting or useful.” He says that the president reads his PDB every day, and he disagreed with the suggestion that there is any difference whatsoever between simply reading the briefing book and having an interactive discussion of its contents with top national security and intelligence officials where the president can probe assumptions and ask questions.

This makes no sense to me. If my top priority were keeping the country safe, there's no way I'd be blowing off face to face meetings and relying on executive summaries.

Compare Obama's approach to that of his predecessor:

[President Bush] held his intelligence meeting six days a week, no exceptions — usually with the vice president, the White House chief of staff, the national security adviser, the director of National Intelligence, or their deputies, and CIA briefers in attendance. Once a week, he held an expanded Homeland Security briefing that included the Homeland Security adviser, the FBI director and other homeland security officials. Bush also did more than 100 hour-long “deep dives” in which he invited intelligence analysts into the Oval Office to get their unvarnished and sometimes differing views. Such meetings deepened the president’s understanding of the issues and helped analysts better understand the problems with which he was wrestling.

Now that sounds like a Commander in Chief who takes his constitutional oath to protect the country seriously. Obama sounds like he's just going through the motions.

So the president likes golf

I read today that President Obama has played 140 rounds of golf in the past 9 days. (Those numbers may be off; I'm going from memory and I'm too lazy to look it up.) I'm sure I'm supposed to be outraged by this, but I have no idea why. Why should I care if Obama plays a lot of golf? Is he supposed to be presidenting 24 hours a day? I figure his days are plenty full, and plenty stressful, and if golf is his way of getting away from it all, that's okay with me.

I felt the same way about Bush-43 and his vacations. People complained that he vacationed too much, but that didn't upset me either. It's not like these guys drop off the grid when they take time off. People know where to find them. And they still seem to have plenty of time to figure out ways to spend my money and meddle in my life, so it's not like they are getting behind in their work.

I also read today that Michelle Obama spent a billion dollars on a dress. (Maybe it was only a million; I'm going by memory again.) But unless she bought the dress with tax payer money, again, so what? She's filthy rich, and rich people buy nice stuff. That's kind of the whole point of being rich in the first place, isn't it? I can tell you right now that if I ever get rich I'm sure as hell going to buy a of nice stuff.

I guess the point is supposed to be that the Obamas are "out of touch." I'm not even exactly sure what that means, but I do know that I don't care. I don't need the president or his family to "feel my pain," and I don't give a putt what they do with their own money.

All I care about is what the president and his friends are doing with my money -- and that is definitely a cause for outrage.

Unwinnable war on terror...

Yesterday, on NBC’s “Today” show, President Bush was asked whether we can win the war on terror. His response:

I don't think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that the - those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world.

Naturally, the Democrats pounced on this, claiming Bush flip-flopped and demonstrated weakness. Their attacks are disingenuous, of course--Bush has been strong and clear on the war, in both action and word. But the Dems are probably right to attack. Bush set himself up by saying the right thing in the wrong way, and he must now pay the price for his mental hiccup.

We saw John Kerry do the same thing when he uttered the now famous: “I actually did vote for the 87 billion before I voted against it.” It’s a defensible statement—if you ever get the chance to defend it. And so it’s also an exceedingly stupid thing to say.

The Democrats won’t get as much mileage out of Bush’s gaffe as the Republicans did out of Kerry’s, but don’t be surprised to see it featured in a 30-second ad before the convention winds down.

Now, onto what the president meant. I don’t think the Republicans are handling this quite right. White House spokesman Scott McClellan:

[Bush] was talking about winning it in the conventional sense ... about how this is a different kind of war and we face an unconventional enemy.

Mort Kondrake and Fred Barnes offered similar analysis last night on Fox News, as does David Limbaugh on his blog:

…because we are at war against a radical strain of Islam, which is not tied to or bound by nation states, and which therefore cannot be defeated by just defeating nation states, we are going to be fighting this war for a long time.

Maybe I’m quibbling, but I think this falls a bit short of explaining Bush's comment. Bush is known for saying what he means, and I suspect he meant it when he said we can’t win the war. In the same way we can’t eliminate murder from our society, we’ll never really win the war on terror. All it takes is one terrorist, somewhere, sometime, to keep it going.

Bush is a realist. He knows this is a war we can never stop fighting. But it is a war we can “win” in the sense that terrorists become an endangered species, deprived of aid and comfort. That, I think, is Bush’s vision, and what he was trying to convey.

Update: Neil Boortz doesn't think the president meant what he said either.

Update 2: Speaking at the American Legion national convention today, Bush said:

We meet today in a time of war for our country, a war we did not start yet one that we will win…In this different kind of war, we may never sit down at a peace table. But make no mistake about it, we are winning and we will win. We will win by staying on the offensive, we will win by spreading liberty.

This closely parallels the expert commentary and belies my theory, but I’m still not convinced. It’s simply too detrimental politically to be on record as saying the war can never be won--in the same way we let the rhetoric of “no child left behind” mask the reality that, under the best of circumstances, some will be.

Update 3: Still more from TMLutas, who states my position more clearly than I did.

Different takes...

Andrew Sullivan describes this passage from John McCain's Republican convention speech as "an implicit rebuke to Bush's hubris after the fall of Baghdad."

We must not be complacent at moments of success, and we must not despair over setbacks. We must learn from our mistakes, improve on our successes, and vanquish this unpardonable enemy.

I disagree. I think. On first hearing, I was certain this was a solid endorsement of Bush. I equated "complacent" with the temptation to vote for Kerry now that Saddam has fallen. I took "despair over setbacks" as a reference to Kerry's unceasing attempts to cast Iraq as a botched mess. The message I came away with is that we must press on, that we can’t allow missteps and naysayers to derail us from our cause. It was a call to remain loyal to the president in the face of negativity.

Upon review, my opinion hasn’t changed. But now I’m not so sure. In isolation, Andrew’s interpretation certainly holds up—perhaps better than mine. I’d like to take a look at the surrounding passages to glean the context, but I haven’t yet found a transcript on the web.

Update: I've located the transcript, and in fuller context I stand by my interpretation. Maybe I'm just not nuanced enough, but I think Andrew is reaching here.

Only the most deluded of us could doubt the necessity of this war. Like all wars, this one will have its ups and downs. But we must fight. We must.
(APPLAUSE)
The sacrifices borne in our defense are not shared equally by all Americans. But all Americans must share a resolve to see this war through to a just end. We must not be complacent at moments of success, and we must not despair over setbacks.
We must learn from our mistakes, improve on our successes, and vanquish this unpardonable enemy.
(APPLAUSE)
If we do less, we will fail the one mission no American generation has ever failed: to provide to our children a stronger, better country than the one we were blessed to inherit.