If it had been a feature film, the Obama administration’s response to Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election might appropriately have been called “Failure to Launch.”
Of course, that name already was taken by a forgettable 2006 Matthew McConaughey film about a 30-something’s unwillingness to get on with his life, but it fits nonetheless, as last week’s lengthyWashington Post report revealed.
In early August of last year, President Barack Obama was given intelligence information of Russian President Vladamir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the presidential race.
Rather than taking decisive action, Obama, as he did on foreign policy decisions throughout his eight years in office, dithered. The Post report indicated the administration was wary of politicizing the scandal and afraid its response would be seen as helping the Hillary Clinton campaign, so the intelligence community’s September public statement never included the president’s name.
Instead, we believe if the then-president had pulled Clinton and Donald Trump off the campaign trail, briefed them together on what intelligence sources had learned, told them of severe sanctions the administration was about to put in place and then appeared with them together in a Rose Garden speech to reveal the intelligence and the sanctions to the American people, we would not be talking about Russia 10 months later.