“Bergdahl is Obama’s Katrina.”

That was my father’s assessment as I discussed this latest Obama debacle with him this morning. He reminded me that even George W. Bush’s enemies grudgingly admitted that he was a strong leader until his administration’s botched response to Hurricane Katrina shattered that image forever. His administration never recovered, and, for all practical purposes, the Bush presidency ended in 2005.

Dad thinks, then, that Obama’s veneer of confidence and intelligence has been stripped away by the blithering idiocy of swapping five key Taliban commanders for an alleged America-hating deserter whose betrayal cost the lives of six other soldiers who went to look for him.

Maybe my father is right. Maybe now America notices that their president, however well-meaning he might be, is utterly incompetent.

But I doubt it.

Remember that in his first term we had the failed stimulus.  We had a vastly unpopular healthcare law. And, of course, there was the staggering and unprecedented levels of debt and long-term unemployment.

And then in 2012, a solid majority of Americans went to their voting booths and said “More, please!”

Since then, we’ve had the Benghazi fallout, the botched Obamacare rollout, the IRS scandal, and now the VA mess. The economy shrank by 1% last quarter, which means we’re on the edge of yet another recession. And, finally, on top of all this, we’ve got this Bergdahl debacle. And somehow, Bergdahl is the tipping point that will convince America at large that this president is a colossal failure.

But why? If they didn’t notice this man’s incompetence before, why should they notice it now?

Granted, this is such a boneheaded move that it defies rational explanation. Who on earth could have reviewed the facts in this case and presumed this would be a good idea? Who thought America would cheer the trade of a guy who abandoned his post for five high-level terrorists ready and eager to go back into action? I could have run this whole scenario past my nine-year-old son, and he’d have been able to point out that this was probably the wrong move. So how on earth did Barack Obama, supposedly the smartest president we’ve ever had, blunder into something so transparently dumb as this?

But I get tired of asking that question. It’s a question that could have been – and should have been – asked by the press when it was clear that the Obama White House was lying about the protests at the Benghazi embassy, or when the president repeatedly told Americans they could keep their plans and their doctors when he knew that wasn’t true. And yes, those questions were asked, but the askers were and are dismissed as right-wing cranks at best and racists at worst. And the process has already begun to do the same to those who dare to find fault with this Bergdahl mess.

Witness Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast, who distills the entirety of the Berghdal story down to “right-wing crack.” He also makes the ludicrous assertion that “if a Republican president had swapped five Taliban leaders for Bergdahl, all the people howling today would be spinning it positively.” First of all, no Republican president would be imbecilic enough to do something like this. And before you say “George W. Bush,” remember that W. once wore the uniform himself, which means he would have spoken to some of the soldiers who knew Bergdahl’s history and have a far more realistic sense of what the military reaction would be to something this wrong.

Secondly, if George W. Bush had brazenly defied the law by bypassing Congress in releasing five high-level Taliban operatives for one guy that walked out on his unit and got several guys killed, would any spin for right-wing defenders prevent W. from being strung up by his thumbs? The press would be relentless in shredding him to bits, and those talking impeachment wouldn’t be dismissed as crackheads.

But this is Obama, and the Obama administration has two things that Bush’s didn’t have: 1) widespread incompetence, and 2) a free pass for said widespread incompetence.

Bergdahl won’t change #1, but maybe it will change #2. And then maybe Mitt Romney will be appointed president and monkeys will fly out of my butt.