I have recently heard plenty of harebrained attacks on President Obama, ranging from the inane to the clearly ginned up, and I’ve done my best to call out the perpetrators. But when he screws the pooch, as every administration inevitably does, we also need to call him out on it. That’s why I find myself reading the New York Times today and wondering what the heck is going on in the West Wing these days.

Obama Won’t Bar Inquiry, or Penalty, on Interrogations

WASHINGTON — President Obama left the door open Tuesday to creating a bipartisan commission that would investigate the Bush administration’s use of harsh interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects, and did not rule out action by the Justice Department against those who fashioned the legal rationale for those techniques.

I just spent two days reading about how Obama was was interested in “looking forward, not backward.” He was not going to hold the grunts and beurocrats who were assured everything they were doing was legal responsible for their actions, regardless of new policy. And now this?

Here’s what I get from the optics of this situation: first, the Attorney General looks like a toothless lapdog, gumming whatever bones slide his way. Second, and much larger in significance, it looks like President Obama’s team made a decision on how to handle this, but the hard Left in Congress and their supporters screamed for the blood of the Bush administration and Obama backed down in less than 24 hours.

Yes, I’m well aware that many of you are upset about the Bush era policies in question, but that’s not the issue here. Obama and his team had to know this question was coming. (If not, they don’t deserve to be in politics.) They knew they needed an answer and a position on how it would be handled. To have this sort of shift in position in a single day makes them look even more like pushovers for Nancy Pelosi and the furthest Left wing of the party.

Not good, Mr. President. Not good at all.