When pundits and politicians are asked to explain Barack Obama’s inaction on matters such as the aggression of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, their frustration is visible as they point to an impossible level of fecklessness. What none of them fail to consider is that it’s all intentional. Their refusal to consider that option may be causing them to underestimate the president.

While in The Hague, Netherlands for the nuclear summit, U.S. President Obama gave an extremely bizarre answer to a question about Russia’s rising influence as a result of its actions in Ukraine. Obama said that Russia’s annexation of Crimea “indicates less influence, not more” on the part of Russia. He then went on to say that he doesn’t believe Russia poses the “number one security threat to the United States”, though implicit in that assertion is that Russia does pose a threat.

Watch as Obama tells us what he believes the greatest threat to U.S. security is:

There you have it; the threat of a nuclear bomb detonating in Manhattan is the number one security threat to the U.S. according to President Obama. This leads us to an interesting read by Richard Falkenrath at the New York Daily News (h/t WZ). Falkenrath is the former deputy commissioner of counterterrorism at the NYPD and says the Obama administration has “again proposed to slash the budget for the one initiative designed to protect Manhattan from nuclear threats”.

All this begs a very logical question. If Obama sees a nuclear bomb going off in Manhattan as the biggest national security threat to the U.S., why would his administration intentionally cut back on protection against such an attack? Putting this into the context of a pattern, wouldn’t it also be logical to conclude that if Russia is a threat to the U.S. – as Obama acknowledged – that his administration might not do all it can to neutralize that threat?

Richard Falkenrath

Talk show host Ben Barrack has been insisting that political leaders and pundits are refusing to allow themselves to consider a very dangerous possibility when it comes to Obama. “To underestimate Obama is to view him as incompetent, weak, and naive,” Barrack said. “What if he’s none of those things? His time being mentored by Soviet Stalinist Frank Marshall Davis means that he was likely marinated in Soviet propaganda techniques and may be in solidarity with Putin more than anyone wishes to admit”.

Two years ago this week, at another nuclear summit – in Seoul, South Korea – Obama asked then Russian President Dmitri Medvedev for “space” until “after my election”, at which point Obama would have “more flexibility”. The question about what that meant has still not been sufficiently answered but if it meant Obama would stand down when Putin decided to invade countries, it’s a perfect-fitting puzzle piece:

Pundits like the highly intellectual Charles Krauthammer and Col. Ralph Peters continue to operate from the premise that Obama is hopelessly weak instead of intentionally so.

Barrack insists that Obama’s inaction relative to Russia is likely more deliberate than about weakness. “Obama knows what he’s doing,” he said. “You don’t get to the position of President of the United States by being as incompetent as he’d like us to believe.”

Freedom-loving Americans are opponents of Barack Obama; he has made that very clear. As such, overestimating him carries much less risk than underestimating him, which is exactly what happens when pundits and politicians operate from the premise that he is incompetent. Nearly four years ago, at the Heritage Foundation, an audience member asked then House Minority Whip, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) what would qualify Obama for ‘domestic enemy’ status. Cantor laughed off the question:

If Obama is a domestic enemy, it is the duty of every member of the U.S. Congress to deal with it according to the Constitution, which they took an oath to defend “…against all enemies, both foreign…”

You know the rest.

An appropriate song to accompany this post… Crashing by Design: