OBAMA AND TERROR – QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 9:30 A.M. ET:  There is still general dismay over the way Town Councilman Obama botched America's response to the vast anti-terror rally in Paris.  Byron York nails it, at the Washington Examiner: 

The White House reaction to the attacks in France, going back to the first reports of shots fired at Charlie Hebdo, has been noticeably subdued. Obama had scheduled last week as a time to roll out some upcoming State of the Union proposals in trips to Michigan, Arizona and Tennessee. When world events intruded, the president stubbornly stuck to his schedule, mentioning France only briefly before introducing his plan for free tuition at community colleges.

Then came the unity march. No, it was not essential that Obama himself attend. But there's no doubt he should have sent Vice President Joe Biden — why is there a VP, if not to go to big foreign events? — or at least Secretary of State John Kerry.

Even as the march wound its way through Paris, the White House sent out yet another sign of its unseriousness. On Sunday morning, the press office announced the president will host a "Summit on Countering Violent Extremism" on Feb. 18. The plan is to bring together "social service providers, including education administrators, mental health professionals, and religious leaders, with law enforcement agencies to address violent extremism as part of the broader mandate of community safety and crime prevention."

As the world watched images of black-clad, AK-47-wielding terrorists killing Parisians, Obama proposed to meet the threat with social service providers.

So when the president chose not to attend the Paris march, nor to send the Vice President or Secretary of State, the problem wasn't a tin-ear sense of public relations. It was Obama's actual attitude toward the terror threat facing not only Europe but the United States. We've dealt with the big stuff, Obama has declared, now let's move on.

It sounded good — until the bullets started flying.

COMMENT:  Yup.  That's it.  Obama isn't the "pragmatist" we were sold in 2008.  He isn't even a liberal.  He's a leftist, but the conventions of liberal journalism make it impossible for the mainstream media to admit it.  I suspect that, while world leaders were marching on Monday, Obama was watching a football game.  All that terror stuff is beneath him.  It's so, so BUSH!

What struck me was that even Obama's own partisans wouldn't back him in his blunder, his indifference to events in Paris.  Now the White House admits that not sending a major figure to the march was a mistake.  I'd like to know how that conclusion was reached.  Did a grown-up sit down with Obama and explain reality to him?  Or did a pollster intervene while Valerie Jarrett was out of the room?

January 13, 2015