Imagine you are the President of the United States. A boatload of scandals that have been building (and ignored by the media) for years suddenly start to unfold over the course of a few weeks - safely after the President has won re-election, of course. And with each one the story is the same: the White House had no idea. They are sorry. They will get to the bottom of it. It's unacceptable. But it seems almost impossible that the President of the United States - especially in 2013 - would learn about every major breaking scandal only by reading it in the newspapers. It seems improbable that he has absolutely no staff that would warn him and that every person beneath him prevents him from learning something so as to not interfere with his golfing expedition, celebrity party planning at the White House, or the his next vacation (and we would have to assume this is what he is doing since he apparently isn't doing anything else.) We have to believe that President Obama...
Was unaware of the Fast and Furious program; that information of the ill-thought-out scandal was coming out; that whistleblowers were being targeted by the Department of Justice for speaking out; and that he read about most of the details in the newspaper...
AND
That he was unaware of anything that happened in Benghazi while it was happening (he "went to sleep" or something); had no involvement in the decision not to send help; was unaware of the talking points being shifted away from being an Al-Qaeda terrorist attack (correct) and to exclusively blaming a random video; only relied on edited (and false) talking points without reading the full CIA briefing and knowing they were bologna; read most of the breaking details in the newspaper...
AND
That he was unaware that the IRS was exclusively targeting hundreds upon hundreds of tea party and conservative groups during two crucial election cycles; that he was clueless about it despite previous inquiries and two years worth of complaints from the targeted groups; that every person beneath him never thought to bring it up that it was going on even though high-level officials knew it was happening; that even when the Inspector General report was about to come out nobody bothered to tell him; and that Obama once again read about it in the papers...
AND
That he had no idea the Department of Justice was apparently targeting multiple journalists who dared to investigate his administration (specifically most of the above-referenced items he was unaware of); that nobody ever bothered to inform Obama about information found from the DOJ's adventures in stalking; that everyone beneath Obama was working in direct conflict to "his" ethical standards he has since "made clear"; that nobody bothered to inform him before THIS story broke; that he - now don't be shocked here - read most of the details from news reports...
AND
All the other things he doesn't know about. Solyndra loans to former allies? Didn't know about it. Sermon's in his church? Definitely didn't know about those, even though he named an entire book after one of them. Capture of Osama bin Laden? Oh wait. Here it is, the ONLY thing in 5 years that Obama will claim to not only know every detail of, but will have everyone within 8 feet yelling about how "gutsy" and brave and heroic he was for making the call. You'd almost think he was there himself (fear not, he was actually golfing during the raid).
The administration isn't just asking us to believe one of these. They are asking us to believe ALL of them. We understand how politics work. We understand that plausible deniability is a benefit of being the President. But they are asking us to believe a lot here. They are asking us to believe he not only has no idea of anything going on within his administration, but that nobody will even tell him what's going on before the news breaks. To not know any of this is going on (and if not personally giving the original directive to not even know anything at all on any of them during the entire time up until the news reports on it) would require, as Hillary once said, the willful suspension of disbelief. It takes a lot to believe the President is so uninformed that he reads about everything in the newspapers. It's unlikely... no. It's impossible.