By Tom Toth
“I first learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this.”
-President Barack Obama
Ah, President Obama. Never slow to shift blame or altogether deny responsibility, the chief executive of the world’s largest and most powerful government has spent the better part of his administration under fire for its mismanagement—but you won’t catch him dead taking responsibility!
The quote above is actually from a year ago — May 13, 2013 — when the administration was facing the IRS targeting scandal. Interestingly, it could be easily copied and pasted into numerous other situations when the Oval Office ducked blame for a federal organization’s misconduct. When facing an issue that risks Obama’s image, the President has repeatedly chosen against taking responsibility for actions within an organization under his direct supervision, bucking a response with something akin to, “man, I heard about it the same way you did.”
If he weren’t the actual leader of the free world, his resemblance to Hogan’s Heroes’ Sgt. Schultz in any given crisis would be humorous.
The following slides are the definitive, unofficial collection of White House scandals that Obama says found out about the same way you did:
