The more such scandals occur in the next two years, the more they will not be seen as scandals, but as mere bothersome hurdles to fundamentally changing America. In the age of Obama, you win the race not by playing by the fossilized rules of jumping over the track’s hurdles — but instead by running right through them to reach the finish line first.
Obama seems to think his legacy will be “ending” “two wars” (whether by losing them or not), shutting down Guantanamo by hook or crook, and vastly cutting the military to avoid any such interventions in the future. He may be right.
The Bergdahl swap certainly helped further that end, and it served as a catalyst for the U.S. withdrawal from the war. Not coincidentally, it got the VA scandal off the evening news. Even the sordid PR stunt of bringing in the Bergdahl parents, in a farcical attempt to replay the spike-the-ball Osama bin Laden press conference, was a sort of transformative in-your-face gesture. The president smiled as Mr. Bergdahl recited Islamic prayers and as he sought to appear Taliban-like in speech and appearance. In our new multicultural age, why not? For Obama, that certainly beats another southern-accented congressman talking about “desertion” and “maybe treason.” Fox News thinks the swap may be the end of Obama; I fear that the president’s ratings more likely may stabilize or go up.
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