Remember when Barak Obama had a silver tongue? Was a great orator - maybe so much so that it didn't matter what he said, it just mattered that he was the coolest guy in the room, or on the platform, or in front of adoring crowds in front of some phony Greek columns in Denver?

Remember that, because it's over.

He's not cool. He's not hip. He's not even terribly articulate; the teleprompter has become the butt of jokes people don't want to make about the President himself. But this really couldn't have been an accident, a slip of the tongue, could it? Could the President of the United States really have said in the wake of Hurricane Sandy that "Americans leave nobody behind?" Did he really have the nerve to use the words that soldiers use to reassure themselves that their comrades will do everything they can to support them?

At a Red Cross relief/campaign stop, President Obama told the audience and the video camera that Sandy was tough, but, "America's tougher. And we're tougher because we pull together, we leave nobody behind, we make sure we respond as a nation and remind ourselves that whenever an American is in need, all of us stand together to make sure we're providing the help that's necessary."

From the man who left American soldiers on the battlefield.

The President is the Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces. It was bad enough that he and his minions -- Secretary of State Clinton, UN Ambassador Susan Rice, Press Secretary Jay Carney -- all spun a knowing lie about "the video," made a show of asking Google to take it down and had the videographer arrested in the dead of night and clapped into jail. They knew better then and now. But it all pales in comparison to what we now know about the failure of the commander in chief to respond to the call of soldiers in battle -- when the battle started, how long it was running, where the enemy was and what was needed on the ground. Clinton can fall on her sword for him; Defense Secretary Panetta can sit next to the Chairman of the joint chiefs and blame the fog of war; CIA Director Petraeus can say it wasn't his guys who screwed up, but only the President is the President.

The commander in chief added insult to injury (and death) by not only abandoning the soldiers but also appropriating for his own use the source of their greatest comfort.

Next thing you know, he'll be telling them, "I've got your back."