Pirate's Cove

Just not mad enough to say it himself

(The Blaze) The White House chief of staff said President Barack Obama is “madder than hell” about reports of treatment delays at veterans’ hospitals across the country.

Top aide Denis McDonough told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday added concerning his boss’ take on the situation: “I’ve got the scars to prove it, given the briefings that I’ve given the president…”

McDonough added that Obama is demanding that Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki and others in the administration “continue to fix these things until they’re functioning the way that our veterans believe they should.”

Nor does he seem mad enough to actually fire anyone. Of course, it’s hard to do that when he’s playing another round of golf (and sent the pool reporter to a maintenance shed).

https://twitter.com/Seattle_D/statuses/468065091091304449

Via Twitchy, which has more comments.

The sad part is, this would really be a perfect issue for Obama to come out and lead. Unlike so many other scandals, does anyone truly think that Team Obama had any part in the VA scandal? I just can’t see anyone in his top administration ordering, suggesting, etc, that VA employees do what they did. There’s no benefit for them to do that. Top leaders cannot know everything all the time, so when a problem appears, they take the issue, get ahead of it, and do something to fix it. People get fired, the issue gets resolved. Yet, Obama doesn’t seem to want to really do anything about it, other than let others speak for him.

Instead, as Mary Katherine Hamm noted the other day, we seem to be entering the “silly press corps, stop asking questions” phase. Soon we will get to the “this is only crazy right wingers talking about it” phase, followed by the referring to the scandal as phony stage, followed by slow walking the investigation and release of documents, ending with saying “dude, that was over a year ago”. The only thing missing from her post is the Dem talking point used to blow off the issue, noting that “Democrats are focusing on the issues that Americans”.

Perhaps Obama is doing something behind the scenes. Though, it seems that yelling and telling others to Do Something seems to be his ultimate involvement. It highlights that Obama is more concerned with Being President than Doing President. Also, that he’s in over his head, even after 5 years in office. Finally, we see he just doesn’t care, even with an issue that he could use to make himself look good by taking strong action.