BY JAY BRYANT

As the Obama administration crumbles like an old Ritz Cracker, the Democrats are trying to save it by claiming there’s no there there, and that all the troubles are caused – in one case literally, in the others figuratively — by a few low level bureaucrats in Cincinnati.

And none of them are caused by Barack Obama.

I think they’re right.

I don’t think Obama is, or ever has been, a causative agent in the events of his life. I think he is a tool, a talented one in certain ways, but lazy in the extreme and not ever in charge. Once he was Bill Ayers tool. Now he’s propped up and sent out to his teleprompter-filled world by the likes of David Axelrod, Eric Holder, and David Plouff.

He is the perfect front man. If he were a conservative, he would be the perfect conservative front man. But he was conditioned by his upbringing at the hands of the communist Frank Marshall Davis, who may not have been his biological father, as some have claimed, but was certainly the father figure of his Hawaiian boyhood. And so he became a front man for the radical left. And a subversive one at that, declining the scruffy radical uniform, idiom, and lifestyle, and going under deep cover with his necktie on, his utter lack of Ebonics or radical rant, his lovely wife, and normal children.

Obama was so straight, he actually had to pretend to believe Jeremiah Wright’s hatemongering religion in order to acquire a patina of street cred in his early political career when the South Chicago hood was the electorate and he couldn’t afford not to be sufficiently authentic.

But he was never willing to work at his job. He got an advance to write Dreams of My Father, but it was too much work and he gave it up after some pathetic scratchings and let Ayers write it. Or so Ayers believably has claimed.

He became a community organizer, but we have no anecdotes of him performing any of the actual work of that calling, going door-to-door, hawking petitions in shopping centers, that sort of thing. He apparently stayed in the law office.

Elected to the Illinois State Senate, he set the standard for absenteeism and authored no meaningful legislation. Then, as U.S. Senator, he reprised the record.

The one kind of work he always did enjoy was the glamour side of his life, reading from the teleprompter, schmoozing, being the guest of honor, acknowledging applause, offering heartfelt sympathy or hearty congratulations as the situation demanded. Being the front man in a political campaign – that was the job description of his life. There were always others, Axelrod especially, to do the dirty work – really dirty work like digging out smutty sex scandals on both his primary and general election opponents when he ran for U.S. Senator in 2004, and conning the Chicago Tribune into publishing them.

Obama’s lazy front-man style has continued into his Presidency, in which he has revealed himself as the Un-Carter. Jimmy Carter became notorious for his inability to delegate responsibility, famously even personally assigning playing times at the White House tennis court. Obama delegates everything. Nancy Pelosi gets to write the health care bill. Obama doesn’t even do the hard work of lobbying Congress to pass it, he just makes the speeches. In Libya, his style finally gets a name: Leading from Behind. Perfect.

And whenever any trouble arises, he orders an investigation – something to be done, and interminably so – by others. The one he ordered into Benghazi almost nine months ago shows no sign of giving birth to anything like a solution to the crime. There’s simply no there there: in the investigation, that is. Indeed, it brings to mind O.J. Simpson’s promise to devote himself to finding his wife’s murderers. How’s that going?

Did Obama order, or even know about, what the IRS was doing to conservative organizations? I doubt it very much, not even in the Henry II sense. His only task in regard to that heinous incident, and the broader and even more egregious crimes and abuses of which it is but the tip of the iceberg, is to express outrage, and promise an investigation. That he can do. How often do we have to listen to him say that “we” are going to get to the bottom of it, and then he’ll be able to take appropriate action? Righto, O.J.

There is plenty of there in the Benghazi scandal, and perhaps even more in the IRS scandal. But is there any in Obama’s leadership? Nope.

Editor’s Note: Jay Bryant was a senior aide to Illinois Gov. Richard Ogilvie and later House Republican Whip Bob Michel before becoming communications director at the National Republican Congressional Committee. Following his tenure at the NRCC, Bryant ran his own communications and production company.