Official White House photo

Former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen, now a Washington Post columnist, has been as forceful as anyone in attacking President Obama for "skipping" intelligence briefings related to national security. It's not true, but Thiessen isn't giving up easy.

To recap for those who haven't heard about this, Obama receives a detailed, written intelligence briefing literally every day, containing pressing national security information. Most of the time, Obama also receives an in-person briefing in the White House, though many of the president's national security meetings are never put on his public schedule.

Thiessen, relying on a conservative group's research on these schedules, insists Obama should have in-person briefings, but has been "skipping" them. In reality, there are no meetings to skip -- whereas Bush relied on in-person briefings designed so he wouldn't have to read as much, Obama, like many presidents before him, prefers to read the briefings, posing questions afterwards.

The facts haven't swayed the Post columnist at all. In fact, Thiessen doesn't care that Obama's practices are identical to previous presidents' because 9/11, 9/11, 9/11.

Comparing lax presidential briefing habits before and after 9/11 is like comparing lax presidential security habits before and after the Kennedy assassination. After terrorists killed 3,000 people in our midst, everything changed -- and the president's daily intelligence meeting took on dramatically increased importance. President Bush made it a priority to sit down with his senior intelligence advisers every day to discuss overnight intelligence on threats to the country. President Obama has not.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but George W. Bush made it a priority to sit down with his senior intelligence advisers because he didn't like to read, and preferred to have officials tell him out loud what the president didn't want to see on paper. Obama is getting detailed briefings every day on threats to the country, but he prefers to get the information the way Reagan and Clinton did.

Why does Thiessen find this important? And why, purely by coincidence, is his former White House colleague, Karl Rove, using a super PAC to make the same argument in attack ads? Can't Republicans focus on real Obama foreign policy missteps and stop relying on nonsense?

There's no reason for Thiessen to keep digging, but he can't seem to help himself. He even seems to be annoying his coworkers.

The Post's Glenn Kessler fact-checked Thiessen's original criticism of Obama, found it lacking, and followed up today, making his colleague look even worse.

Marc Thiessen has posted a response to this column, in which he argues that practices before the September 11 attacks should not be considered. It is an interesting, if not very factual argument. (Reagan, for instance, suffered the loss of 241 servicemen in Beirut as a result of a terror act.) We also find it curious that he now discloses the study was done at his request, by his business partner, and that he now describes the Government Accountability Institute as “nonpartisan” whereas in his earlier column he had called it a “conservative investigative research organization.”

Upon reflection, we now realize that the GAI report has a bit of an inconsistency problem. Thiessen had earlier claimed Bush had oral intel briefings six days a week--though no actual schedule is available to confirm that--so at the very least GAI should have subtracted one a day week from Obama’s numbers to make a valid comparison. (The White House schedule does not list briefings on weekends but Peter Schweizer, president of GAI and Thiessen’s business partner, says the study also relied on Politico’s White House calendar, which does list some weekend meetings. Schweizer says the report is “about Obama and his scehdule.”)

We had nearly given this data Four Pinocchios and in restrospect we were perhaps too generous with Three.

And finally, it's also worth remembering that Thiessen's entire line of attack only helps remind us that George W. Bush received a series of dramatic briefings about a pending al Qaeda strike in 2001, which he neglected to take seriously.

Thiessen really should have quit while he was behind.

In recent weeks, and especially over the last few days, the right has become fully invested in a strange line of attack against President Obama. As we discussed on Tuesday, Dick Cheney, former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen, and others are accusing Obama of "skipping" intelligence briefings related to national security. The closer one looks at the argument, the dumber it appears.

And yet, in the wake of Tuesday night's violence, conservatives are now going all in.

Now, I strongly suspect that Thiessen, a loyal Bushie who's now a Washington Post columnist, knows what he's saying is silly. He worked in the White House and surely realizes this anti-Obama attack really doesn't make any sense at all.

But it's an election season, Thiessen hopes to undermine the president's standing, so it's in his interests to say Obama blew off an intelligence meeting yesterday in order to jet off to Vegas to raise campaign cash.

The truth, as Thiessen probably realizes, isn't controversial at all. In reality, Obama received a detailed, written intelligence briefing yesterday, just as he does literally every day, which contained pressing national security information. Most of the time, Obama also receives an in-person briefing in the White House, though as Thiessen probably realizes, many of the president's national security meetings are never put on his public schedule.

But what about the meetings the president is allegedly "skipping"? There are no such meetings -- as Dana Milbank explained today, "In reality, Obama didn't 'attend' these meetings, because there were no meetings to attend: The oral briefings had been mostly replaced by daily exchanges in which Obama reads the materials and poses written questions and comments to intelligence officials. This is how it was done in the Clinton administration, before Bush decided he would prefer to read less. Bush's results -- Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and the failure to find Osama bin Laden -- suggest this was not an obvious improvement."

Indeed, Thiessen's entire line of attack only helps remind us that George W. Bush received a series of dramatic briefings about a pending al Qaeda strike in 2001, which he neglected to take seriously.

But even if we put that aside, this attempt to smear Obama is nonsensical. I realize Republicans are looking at the polls and feeling antsy, but this line of attack is just dumb.

Update: I've since been informed by a Democratic source that the president didn't even have any fundraisers in Nevada yesterday. The attack is wrong on every possible level.