DELAY-GATE!

Yesterday, President Obama took steps to deal with the scandals he's facing -- he released Benghazi e-mails and the acting commissioner of the IRS got a pink slip -- and even Politico is giving him good marks. However, a few of the folks Politico quotes wonder what the hell took so long, because, after all, it's been days:

Ideally, Obama would have acted earlier, [Democratic strategist Phil] Singer said.

"You don't want to sit back and let events control you. You want to take control of events," he said....

[Robert] Gibbs, the former Obama press secretary, said earlier this week to say that Obama should have spoken out on the IRS issue last Friday or over the weekend, and that the president should've been more forceful when he finally did speak on Monday....

Yes, he had to act nownownow, not work out his response over the course of, um, five days, because his approval rating had dropped 30 points and people trapped under the scandal rubble were about to bleed to death in a matter of hours and a meteor was about to destroy earth that could be steered off course only if Obama acted immediately. No, wait -- none of that was happening.

Look, this guy likes to take a little time when preparing a response. And it always makes Beltway insiders freak out -- or at least it does at the time, though afterward it's hard for anyone, including those same insiders, to recall what the fuss was about. Remember Obama's horrible, unconscionable, unthinkable delay in deciding whether to send more troops to Afghanistan? REmember all the fussing and fretting about that? No? You don't remember? Well, neither does anyone else now.

In the case of the current scandals, Obama has finally started to act, and the critics are finally calming down, according to Politico ... right?

Moving ahead, Democrats agree that Obama needs to try to change the subject....

And the White House has "got to do it soon and quickly, because we've got to get back to immigration, the debt, energy," [frormer Pennsylvania governor Ed] Rendell said. "He's got a limited window to take action on the real challenges of the country...."

Sigh.