From the cheap seats

By Mustang Bobby

Former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu is an odious has-been who got bounced out of his job as George H.W. Bush's chief of staff for misusing government planes and generally being a prick. (Irony of ironies, it was George W. Bush who told him to take a hike.) Now he's back as a surrogate for Mitt Romney and proving that the passage of time has not taught him anything about humility or second-guessing other people:

Mitt Romney campaign co-chair and former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu accused President Obama of waiting too long to order the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, in an interview with the New York Times that was published on Saturday.

Sununu said that Obama was "timid," could have gone after the terrorist mastermind sooner, and attributed the successful operation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:

The president is trying to take credit for following the strategy and the tactics put into place by George W. Bush. At some point the president is going to have to explain why he was timid on the first two or three opportunities that we had. Thank goodness Hillary Clinton was there was to convince him to do the right thing. [...] His trying to take credit for having been decisive belies the fact that he wasn't decisive until pressed by others. 

But former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who served in both the Bush and Obama administrations, described Obama's decision to order the raid that killed Osama bin Laden "gutsy," saying that “people don't realize" what a tough call it was and not everyone would have made the same call. Vice President Biden and Gates both advised Obama against taking the course he chose on the bin Laden raid, noting that "There wasn't any direct evidence that he was there. It was all circumstantial."

Once an sphincter, always a sphincter.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)