So President Obama was on 60 Minutes last night. Steve Kroft asked about the meteoric rise of ISIS in northern Iraq:
Steve Kroft: How did they end up where they are in control of so much territory? Was that a complete surprise to you?
President Obama: Well I think, our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria.
I can’t find a full transcript to verify that this was the complete context surrounding Obama’s remark, but I wonder what possesses him to do stuff like this? It’s Management 101 that you don’t throw folks under the bus (on national TV!) unless you have pretty convincing reasons for doing so. I mean, all he had to do was say that “we underestimated” what was happening in Syria.
This is really tone deaf. Even if the whole debacle really was Clapper’s fault, it would still sound terrible to say so. Was this just a real-time flub? Or, after six years, does Obama still not understand how petty it sounds to try to deflect blame this way?
