A disinterested president

As much as I tried to stay focused on the World Series, some other news tidbits managed to slip through the cracks this past week.

In the excitement of the annual Fall Classic, I may have missed something. But here's what I thought I heard.

* The United States has been spying on as many as 35 of our allies over the past few years without their knowledge. And, so we're told, without the knowledge of the president himself.

* The ever-popular Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) rollout ran into more trouble -- if that's possible -- over the weekend. But we're told the president had no knowledge of the mounting problems.

* It wasn't long ago that we learned that the even-more-popular IRS was secretly gathering information on conservative groups and the head of that IRS division even refused to testify before Congress. But you'll recall that our president had no knowledge of this illegal action.

* And Fast and Furious was a quiet little experiment to funnel illegal guns to Mexico and then try to trace how they managed to get into the drug cartel hands. But again, our president (and apparently our attorney general) had no knowledge of this failed and fatal program.

* I almost forgot Benghazi (which this administration desperately hopes we do). That bungled tragedy claimed four American lives but no one, including our president, had any knowledge of the details.

Surely I am missing something here but my focus is clearly distracted by the Cardinals and Red Sox.

So exactly what does this president know?

Well, he knows the Republicans are to blame for the government shutdown. He knows that the sequester -- which you'll recall was his idea -- was just a Republican plot to undermine his presidency.

The president does quite clearly know that "pivoting" to immigration or education will distract from a faltering economy which he consistently ignores.

These items he knows.

I can understand a disconnected president. President Obama is surely not the first.

What I can't understand is a disinterested president.

Michael Jensen is the publisher of the Sikeston Standard Democrat.