“As the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) calculated, and Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen first reported, Obama attended only 43.8 percent of his PDBs between January 23, 2009 (three days after his inauguration), and May 31, 2012. Available nearly every day, the PDB allows the commander-in-chief to hear directly from top intelligence professionals about the latest threats to U.S. safety. These experts are on hand to answer questions, hear suggestions, and otherwise help Obama foil America’s enemies.
But Obama has had higher priorities.
According to GAI’s data, which was culled from the official White House calendar and Politico’s news coverage of that schedule, Obama chose to skip his PDBs and, instead, simply read his briefing book. This is a bit like studying one’s chest X-rays at home, having spurned a radiologist’s offer to interpret them and answer pertinent questions. In this sense, Obama quietly reviewed his national-security X-rays alone during 56.2 percent of the time GAI analyzed. In 2011, Obama missed 61.6 percent of his PDBs.”
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