Foreign and Defense Policy
Obama: I?m a better intelligence briefer than my intelligence briefers
Marc Thiessen | September 13, 2012, 2:22 pm
In today?s Washington Post, I quote NSC spokesman Tommy Vietor as explaining why his boss has skipped more than half his daily intelligence meetings since taking office ? including every day in the week leading up to the attacks on our diplomatic facilities in Egypt and Libya: Obama, they say, doesn?t need briefers because he is just so much smarter than everyone else. As Vietor put it to me in an email, ?Unlike your former boss [President Bush], he has it delivered to his residence in the morning and not briefed to him.?
The White House takes pride in the fact that Obama?s PDB is ?not briefed to him? ? because, they say, he is ?among the most sophisticated consumers of intelligence on the planet.? That hubris brings to mind this revealing quote from a September 2008 New York Times profile of Obama:
?I think that I?m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,? Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker. ?I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I?ll tell you right now that I?m going to think I?m a better political director than my political director.?
So it should come as no surprise that apparently Barack Obama thinks he?s a better intelligence briefer than his intelligence briefers.
Obama: I?m a better intelligence briefer than my intelligence briefers
Marc Thiessen | September 13, 2012, 2:22 pm
In today?s Washington Post, I quote NSC spokesman Tommy Vietor as explaining why his boss has skipped more than half his daily intelligence meetings since taking office ? including every day in the week leading up to the attacks on our diplomatic facilities in Egypt and Libya: Obama, they say, doesn?t need briefers because he is just so much smarter than everyone else. As Vietor put it to me in an email, ?Unlike your former boss [President Bush], he has it delivered to his residence in the morning and not briefed to him.?
The White House takes pride in the fact that Obama?s PDB is ?not briefed to him? ? because, they say, he is ?among the most sophisticated consumers of intelligence on the planet.? That hubris brings to mind this revealing quote from a September 2008 New York Times profile of Obama:
?I think that I?m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,? Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker. ?I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I?ll tell you right now that I?m going to think I?m a better political director than my political director.?
So it should come as no surprise that apparently Barack Obama thinks he?s a better intelligence briefer than his intelligence briefers.
