We will spend a good portion of the next two and a half years wondering about the president’s psychological condition. At yesterday’s DNC fundraiser, he declared,
The world has never been healthier, it has never been wealthier, it has never been more tolerant, there’s never been more opportunity than there is today.
Are you feeling it, America?
This was the president’s assessment of the state of the world today:
THE PRESIDENT: And yet, despite all this, people are anxious. Now, some of that has to do with some big challenges overseas. I am very proud that we have ended one war, and by the end of this year we will have ended both wars that I inherited before I came into office. [Applause.] But whether people see what’s happening in Ukraine, and Russia’s aggression towards its neighbors in the manner in which it’s financing and arming separatists; to what’s happened in Syria — the devastation that Assad has wrought on his own people; to the failure in Iraq for Sunni and Shia and Kurd to compromise — although we’re trying to see if we can put together a government that actually can function; to ongoing terrorist threats; to what’s happening in Israel and Gaza — part of people’s concern is just the sense that around the world the old order isn’t holding and we’re not quite yet to where we need to be in terms of a new order that’s based on a different set of principles, that’s based on a sense of common humanity, that’s based on economies that work for all people.
Also note the president’s declaration:
Sometimes when you’re watching the news — which I generally don’t do because I — [laughter] — whatever they’re reporting on I usually know about — but it can get depressing, right?
This from the president who said he was not aware of the Veterans Affairs scandal, the Department of Justice’s seizing the records of the Associated Press, the IRS scandal, the Fast and Furious scandal, and spying on Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany until he heard about it from media reports . . .