Michelle might want to gently tap the president on the shoulder and remind him "umm, Barack, you're not in the faculty lounge any more. You're actually, uh, President and Commander-in-Chief. So you don't get to criticize your own failed policies as if you're not responsible for them. They're, umm, your policies, you know?"
Commenting on President Obama's 60 Minutes interview in which he said he was "skeptical from the get-go" about his administration's failed policy of training Syrian rebels, WaPo's David Ignatius on today's Morning Joe called the president's reaction "weird," adding "he spoke almost like a man vindicated when a policy of his own administration had collapsed in failure. And he was, he took the line almost of, see, I told you so."
Have a look at the clip from the 60 Minutes interview. President Obama is taking "leading from behind" to a surreal new level in which he gets to hang back and second-guess the failures of his own administration.
Kudos to Willie Geist for raising the question with Ignatius, and to the Washington Post editor and columnist for calling Obama's comments for what they were: a "weird" sort of "I told you so."
STEVE KROFT: You have been talking a lot about the moderate opposition in Syria. It seems very hard to identify. And you talked about the frustrations of trying to find some and train them. You had a half-a-billion dollars from congress to train and equip 5,000, and at the end, according to the commander of CENTCOM, you got 50 people, most of whom are, are dead or deserted. He said you've got four or five left.
BARACK OBAMA: Steve, this is why I've been skeptical from the get-go about the notion that we were going to effectively create this proxy army inside of Syria.
. . .
WILLIE GEIST: It cost about $500 million for five trained fighters. And he said you know what, I didn't really like that policy from the beginning. And Steve Croft asked him, well then why did you go forth with it? Are you surprised at the way the president has talked so openly about his own disdain for that policy?
DAVID IGNATIUS: It was weird to me, Willie, in that he spoke almost like a man vindicated when a policy of his own administration had collapsed in failure. And he was, he took the line almost of, see, I told you so.
