OUR COMMANDER – AT 9:44 A.M. ET:   Barack Obama has been in office five and a half years, and we still ask, "Who is he?"  We still seem to know so little about him.  And when people ask penetrating questions about his past, about why he won't release key records in his background, they're put down immediately or called "racists." 

There will probably now be a formal congressional investigation of Benghazi.  Democrats are already opposing it, some threatening to boycott it.  I wonder why.  Could it be that this probe will finally tell us the character of the man in the White House?  The great Andrew Malcolm of IBD, gives us a stark portrait of Barack Obama's actions during an event in which four Americans, including an ambassador, were murdered:

But for us the most pressing, curious and disturbing question today remains: Where was the Commander-in-Chief and what was he doing during an eight-hour attack that left four government employees unprotected, abandoned and dead?

We know now, thanks to Bret Baier's recent interview with ex-Obama aide Tommy Vietor, that the president was not in the Situation Room, the secure, in-house command post where presidents usually go to oversee crises. Remember the Osama bin Laden assassination-night photo with Obama back in the corner and others riveted to a real-time video screen?

Clinton and then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta have both said they talked with Obama by phone that awful evening. And Obama's said he ordered all necessary security for American facilities and representatives abroad.

But that's it! Nothing more.

Not until the next morning when Obama emerged into the Rose Garden with a silent Clinton to denounce the attack, cite the video and vow quick justice to the perpetrators. Then, he flew off to Las Vegas campaign fundraisers before the bodies were cold. Justice remains undelivered 600 days later.

Now, recall the contemporary context: Six weeks out from his reelection. Months into his comforting meme that he had al Qaeda on the run, decimated its leadership and sent Bin Laden to sleep with the fishes.

Mitt Romney was warning that indecision and lack of preparation were great threats to national security. Obama would mock him as uninformed and outdated for his prescient warnings about Russia remaining a strategic foe of the United States.

COMMENT:  A picture of a president who is a perpetual candidate, but not much of an involved president.  It is, in my view, a compelling picture. 

It is also the picture of a president who believes the United States of America is the problem, not the solution. 

As some have called him, the first post-American president.

May 5, 2014