Enough Lip Service, Mr. President

 

There was a sportscaster who used to say, “the wheels are coming off now,” to denote a sports team in the throes of a thorough thrashing. One could borrow the phrase to describe the  floundering Obama administration especially now with the  latest  revelation regarding military veterans not getting the adequate and timely care they deserve from the Veterans' Administration.

When the president found out about inconsistencies in record keeping, long waits and fatalities, according to CNN  as many as 40 veterans died waiting for medical treatment, he was appalled and promised to get to the bottom of the situation. Indeed , anytime an inconvenient truth rears its ugly head the president resorts to his default position, feigning ignorance, then promising to resolve said situation.

Don’t expect to see the president with those affected by the tragedies that occurred at the VA. He only appears in the public spotlight when those victimized support one of his initiatives. In this case, he’ll send some junior-level officers to try and assuage the family members affected. And, of course, they’ll have no information about what happened or why it happened. These are common threads in this administration.

He seems to have not known about  “Fast and Furious,” the IRS harassment of conservative  fund-raising groups, the glitches inherent in the Obamacare website roll out. He was incommunicado during the Benghazi tragedy. This pattern lends credence to the criticism many of his distractors adhere to:  that he is not engaged in his position or is incompetent. Or my feeling, that his incompetence is matched only by his high-handed tendencies. And his sheer distaste for accepting responsibility for anything other than a terrible golf game.

 Perhaps in between the accolades bestowed upon him by the Hollywood elites at fund-raising events; his frequent vacations, putting on the verdant greens of some of the best courses in the country, he can convene an occasional cabinet meeting to find out what’s going on under his watch, if only to make Jay Carney’s spin doctoring look less tendentious and more informative.

Instead,  expect the Oblivicrats to circle the wagons and point at the president’s  predecessor as being responsible for the current situation in the Veterans Administration. After all, President Bush got us into these wars.

 With an overly sympathetic media, the president may straddle yet another maelstrom. But I think to the American electorate, looking forward to the upcoming mid-term elections,  the wheels on this administration may very well be in need of replacing.