Mark Thiessen revealed in his latest Washington Post article that President Obama doesn’t even show up for half of his daily intelligence briefings. I guess he figures he’s so smart he doesn’t need to, seeing that he thinks he’s smarter than just about everybody.

The Government Accountability Institute, a new conservative investigative research organization, examined President Obama’s schedule from the day he took office until mid-June 2012, to see how often he attended his Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) — the meeting at which he is briefed on the most critical intelligence threats to the country. During his first 1,225 days in office, Obama attended his PDB just 536 times — or 43.8 percent of the time. During 2011 and the first half of 2012, his attendance became even less frequent — falling to just over 38 percent. By contrast, Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush almost never missed his daily intelligence meeting.

I asked National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor about the findings, and whether there were any instances where the president attended the intelligence meeting that were not on his public schedule. Vietor did not dispute the numbers, but said the fact that the president, during a time of war, does not attend his daily intelligence meeting on a daily basis is “not particularly interesting or useful.” He says that the president reads his PDB every day, and he disagreed with the suggestion that there is any difference whatsoever between simply reading the briefing book and having an interactive discussion of its contents with top national security and intelligence officials where the president can probe assumptions and ask questions. “I actually don’t agree at all,” Vietor told me in an e-mail, “The president gets the information he needs from the intelligence community each day.”

Read the whole thing. Former Bush administration officials told Thiessen he held these meetings six days a week without fail. Obama has more important things to do, like try to save his job.

Update: This seems like a good spot to insert the latest from The Looking Spoon.

Update: I think I have figured out why Obama doesn’t go to his national security briefings. It isn’t his arrogance, it’s just that he’s probably too hung over most of the time after spending so much time in bars.

Update: Linked by Scared Monkeys – thanks!