Way back when Obama started to run for president, I was skeptical about his chances for a few reasons. The main reason was that he was a weirdo. The number of people you will meet, who are the son of an African immigrant, is small. The number of mixed race people in the country is tiny. The number of mixed race people raised in Indonesia and Hawaii is the set of one.

Then there are the odd things he says, like calling Hawaii Asia or not knowing the number of states. During the 2008 primary campaign, he repeatedly displayed an unfamiliarity with America that was striking. I’m not getting into the birther stuff. I just mean that the guy seemed to be a stranger. Pols always put on an act to seem like a regular fella. Obama works hard to act like a human familiar with our customs.

But, here are.

That’s what I think is at the heart of the Bergdahl fiasco. At first I thought it was a tempest in a teacup, but the furor is quite intense. Americans respect veterans so when they get pissed, they have our attention.

For all the yellow ribbons strewn across his hometown in Idaho and the gratitude expressed by his parents in an emotional visit to the White House on Saturday, it’s looking increasingly unlikely that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl will receive a hero’s welcome when he returns to the United States after nearly five years in Taliban captivity.

From military forums across the country, a groundswell of anger is rising over the Obama administration’s silence on perhaps the most controversial question surrounding the deal that freed Bergdahl in exchange for five senior Taliban members: Was he a deserter?

I know a few vets of Afghanistan and they are livid. Apparently, this story has been percolating in veteran circles for years. Vets have the advantage of knowing how the military works, but also knowing how the politicians make the military work. They get it from both ends. It appears a lot of vets suspected a deal was coming. Now that the deal is official, the anger has spilled over into the general public.

Given the embarrassing behavior of the American media these days, it is truly shocking to see reports like this from the NYTimes. Here’s another critical report from The Hill. Then you have this negative portrayal of the creepy parents in the Washington Post. If Obama has managed to shock his most loyal followers, this deal has gone beyond unconventional.

The puzzle is why in the world would Obama sign off on this?

That’s what brings me back to the weirdo factor. To an American, a soldier who walked away from his post is hard to defend. One that joins the enemy is intolerable. We all know that. Some of us may have sympathy for the guy or blame his defects on larger issues, but even the most liberal American draws the line at helping the enemy. It is why Jane Fonda remains an object of revulsion for most people.

For Obama, none of this registers. Obama has put a lot of time and effort into showing the Muslim world he relates to them and respects them. This has been assumed to be in reaction to the cowboy tactics of Bush. Today it seems like Obama really does relate to the Muslim world more than he relates to America. He seems to have more respect for the Taliban, which he never fails to pronounce with a foreign accent, than he does the US military.

Presidents are usually strange ducks. Reagan had no friends and lived an unconventional life. He was thoroughly American. Clinton was a very strange man, but he was a familiar picaresque figure in southern politics. Even Poppy Bush was a familiar character on the American scene. Obama is a cross between vacuous French intellectual and African despot. He’s nothing like anyone you have ever known.

We have a deeply weird man in the White House and the results have followed.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/06/02/229148/anger-explodes-over-treatment.html#storylink=cpy