White House efforts to convince the U.S. Congress to back military action against Syria are not only failing, they seem to be stiffening the opposition.
That was the assessment on Sunday, not of an opponent but of an early and ardent Republican supporter of Obama's plan for attacking Syria, the influential Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, Mike Rogers.
Rogers told CBS's "Face the Nation" the White House had made a "confusing mess" of the Syria issue. Now, he said, "I'm skeptical myself."
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Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts suggested that the president withdraw his request before it is defeated, saying on CNN's "State of the Union" that there was insufficient support for it in Congress.
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Rogers, among others, faults Obama for not starting months ago to build congressional and public support on Syria.
"They don't have strong relationships in Congress today - that's a huge problem for them," said Rogers. "I think it's very clear he's lost support in the last week.
As for the lack of public support, Rogers added: "You have a reluctant commander in chief, first of all, who's trying to come to the American people and say, 'I'm going to do something, but I'm not going to do a lot.' They're not sure exactly what we're trying to do."
Another Republican supporter, Illinois Representative Adam Kinzinger, said on ABC's "This Week" that he had "reached out to the White House and said, 'hey we support the strike on Syria, we're going to help you round up support if you need it.' I haven't heard back from the White House yet."
This is so sad, so hard to watch. Barack Obama is in over his head. He doesn't know what he wants to do, or why, he doesn't know how to get done what he wants if he knew what he wanted. He does not want to lead. His failure is so public. I feel very bad for our president. I feel worse for our country. We have a non-leader as leader. I don't know when, or if, an American president has ever been as widely viewed as this impotent, this incompetent. I wrote when the NSA bugging of other nations was revealed that Obama's presidency was finished, that I did not know how he could recover from that breach of trust. And he hasn't. It has just gotten worse. He's done. But we still have him for three more years.