Obama's disappearing act

It’s rare that I find myself wholeheartedly agreeing with the Republican National Committee. In fact, I can count the number of times that’s happened on zero fingers.

Well, make that one time. One finger. Whatever.

The RNC is calling President Obama a “bystander president,” and it’s hard to disagree.   

When — and really think hard — was the last time what Obama wanted or what he did actually mattered?

It’s always like this, of course. People overestimate what a president can do or will change about the country.

But first-term Obama got Obamacare through Congress, he made substantial decisions — even if you disagree with them — on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, free trade and the bailout. He killed bin Laden and saved General Motors Co., to quote Vice President Biden.

It’s been almost exactly a year since Obama won reelection. It’s the depressing sequel to “500 Days of Summer.” Call it “360 Days of Irrelevancy.”

Since re-election, Obama tried to get Congress to bomb Syria, and he failed. Russian President Vladimir Putin solved that one, getting Syria to give up its chemical weapons.

Then, the debt ceiling, government shutdown fight. I credit Obama for holding firm and not giving in to Republican hostage-taking. But it’s not like he really mattered then either. All of the drama there was intramural within the Republican Party.

And he didn’t even manage to turn that fiasco — after which only 18 percent of voters approved of Republicans and Congress’s approval rating fell to sub-hemorrhoid levels — into a lasting political victory.

Then came the seemingly endless NSA wiretapping debacle.

Not only is our government spying on France and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, news broke Wednesday it also hacked Google and Yahoo’s data centers.

I’m not an expert or anything, but I think this gave NSA access to basically anything on the Internet. Or at least much of it.

Finally, the Obamacare rollout.

This was supposed to be the biggest legislative victory of the Obama presidency, but the website was buggy. Probably not that huge of a deal, but certainly not ideal.

The most buzz Obama has generated regarding Obamacare was when he helped catch the fainting woman in his crowd.

He didn’t know about Merkel. He didn’t know about the data centers. He didn’t know the healthcare.gov website wasn’t going to work.

The problem isn’t exclusive to Obama. President George W. Bush kind of just chilled out during his second term when he wasn’t sexually harrassing Merkel.

But Obama was a boss. In late 2008, after it was clear that Obama would be our next president, Bush basically let Obama run the country. Bush actually sent Congress a letter at Obama’s request asking for bailout money to be available for Obama when he entered office.

And Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki endorsed candidate Obama’s Iraq withdrawal timeline four months before Election Day 2008.

What happened to the Obama that made things happen before he was actually the president?

Step it up, Mr. President.

­— shlumorg@indiana.edu
Follow columnist Luke Morgan on Twitter @shlumorg.