Nov 2, 2013 2 min read

Conservatives are shocked that the NSA, on President Obama’s watch, has been spying on the leaders of other countries including our own allies. The president said he was out of the loop.?

The curse of a good memory is that you sometimes remember embarrassing things. I’ve heard every president since Dwight Eisenhower say they ?were out of the loop? on something or other. But was George W. Bush?out of the loop? on those weapons of mass destruction because of his cabinet secretaries, or was he just loopy?

Bush was unable to find those weapons in Iraq even with his father’s famous “thousand points of light.”? He made jokes that ?those WMDs had to be somewhere.?The joke may have been lost on the families of those solders who lost their lives, as well as the soldiers who lost arms and legs, in that conflict.

Those of us with longer memories may recall a dinner party John F. Kennedy gave for Nikita Khrushchev and his entourage in the early 1960s. Kennedy pretended theatrical anger – shocked yet saddened that the Soviet Union had been spying on the United States. The amused and wily Khrushchev smiled and said, ?well, Mr. President, someday we must exchange spy information.? Kennedy got the point and couldn’t help smiling back at Khrushchev. That was the end of the matter.

Of course, this was before a fire in a trash can outside the Lincoln Memorial caused Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor and Ted Cruz to make the perplexing decision of whether to demand President Obama’s resignation or begin impeachment proceedings. Evidently, there are no other forms of entertainment open to them.

Jay Fenton

Washington