If Bob Woodward’s newest book, Obama’s Wars, is anything like his prior inside accounts of previous administrations, there will be plenty of quotations without sources, lengthy accounts of private conversations that seem too detailed to be believed as totally accurate, and an untold number of back-biting comments about administration officials by other administration hacks. But, if the book is even half accurate, and Washington Post and New York Times accounts of the book’s content are on the mark, then the president is a far more feckless chief executive than any of his most ardent critics could ever have imagined.

What comes across time and time again is that domestic politics overrides his responsibilities as commander-in-chief—be it, the need to get out of Afghanistan as soon as possible to avoid upsetting his domestic agenda, his silly browbeating of his military advisors with OMB and self-authored memorandums, fears about being criticized by his fellow Democrats over fighting the war, and/or allowing staff politicos, like David Axelrod, to have a say in matters of grave national security importance.