Accountability: The buck is supposed to stop on that desk where the president likes to rest his feet. But when asked by "60 Minutes," Obama passed the blame for the Islamic State's rise onto others.

There have been many instances pointed to as Barack Obama's emperor-has-no-clothes moment: "If you like your plan you can keep your plan" exposed as a lie; the first 2012 presidential debate; even last week's disgraceful "latte salute" to Marines.

But the exchange shown to the world on Sunday between the president and his favorite, friendliest interviewer, Steve Kroft of CBS' "60 Minutes," ends whatever doubt there may have been that this most underqualified of presidents is proving to be way out of his depth.

Asked about how he could have missed the rise of a terrorist organization with tens of thousands of foot soldiers, Obama flailed like an unprepared law student zeroed in on by Professor Kingsfield, and pathetically tried blaming others.

You could see it all in his bitter half-smile as he said, "Our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria."

As IBD pointed out years ago, Clapper became director of national intelligence to "Obamacize" America's spy operations, replacing Adm. Dennis Blair, who, as former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., charges, was "cut off at every turn by a White House" treating terrorism as a law-enforcement problem. Clapper may, in fact, be little more than the underling of CIA Director John O. Brennan.

You could also see it all in the venom that accompanied Obama's laying the blame on former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for not producing "a government that had built a sense of national unity."

New Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, says Obama, "so far at least has sent all the right signals." And so "it goes back to" that "we can't do this for them" — the familiar Democrat rationale for pulling troops out prematurely from Iraq. These countries that have never known representative government must "think about what political accommodation means, think about what tolerance means," according to Obama.

To see the president squirm as he tried to explain the IS disaster to a sympathetic interviewer, reduced to hurling blame this way and that, reveals the essence of the Obama administration. Here is the leader of the free world fidgeting before the cameras because a country infested with terrorists didn't end up following a script his party wrote purely to win elections.

Meanwhile — also 100% politics — he has scrapped enhanced interrogation and considering ground forces to fight these terrorists, instead assuring us that having drones kill sources of information about other terrorists is winning what he refuses to call the war on terror.

The golf outings, fundraisers and skipped national security briefings are catching up to President Obama, who uses "we," "they" and "you" when it comes to failure — instead of the "I" he so loves when taking credit.