Putin’s attack, our failure

Adetailed new account of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election leaves no doubt on two fronts: The meddling, ordered by President Vladimir Putin himself, was wide and deep. The response, orchestrated by President Obama, was cautious to the point of being ineffectual.

The exhaustive report in the Washington Post knits together interviews with three dozen current and former officials to paint a deeply disturbing portrait of a brazen foreign attack on American democracy and an administration so consumed about appearing political or poking the Russian bear, it was for all intents paralyzed.

“I feel like we sort of choked,” one former senior Obama official told the reporters.

There is one clear triumph to which Obama and national security officials can point. Despite detected attempts to penetrate 21 state voting systems, timely albeit delayed warnings may have helped ensure that no voting tallies were tainted.

But all in all in this sorry story, the defeats far outnumber the victories.

Since the November elections, as the Kremlin’s meddling has come into focus, many have assumed that cyberattack defenders were struggling to understand what was happening in real time.

That is false. Russia’s interference was well established among U.S. intelligence officials by early summer. And as the Post makes clear, it was early last August that Obama himself was delivered an “eyes only” envelope by CIA courier.

It asserted that Putin was personally directly involved in a campaign to disrupt the election — and that its main objective was to damage or defeat Hillary Clinton and help elect Donald Trump.

It is not as though Obama spun his wheels in response. He ordered aides to get other intel agencies to second and third the assessment; to help strengthen state-run election systems, and to get Democrats and Republicans in Congress to issue a joint statement condemning the Russian intrusions and urging states to accept federal assistance.

But Obama stopped short of speaking with his own voice on the matter, and refused to order swift and aggressive retaliation — waiting instead, despite pressure from those around him, until after the election to issue relatively pin-prick sanctions.

From a political standpoint, the hesitation was understandable: Trump had been warning that the election would be “rigged”; the President did not seek to feed that fear.

He worried, too, about the predictable polarization resulting from a strong ally of Clinton warning about a foreign power seeking to put its thumb on the scale for her opponent. And he feared retaliatory Russian escalation that would go beyond hacks of emails to mess with the vote itself.

But the irony is painful: Because America was in the throes of an intensely sensitive, polarizing election, the sitting President could do next to nothing to strike back against the attempt to influence that very election.

The report reflects poorly on Republicans in Congress, too: Despite a plea by top intelligence officials that they issue a bipartisan appeal to warn about Russian interference, they balked — injecting partisanship into the conversation.

That left it to Democrats to issue a statement, which prompted Republicans to release their own milquetoast warning, with no mention of Russia.

Bottom line: In the face of an unprecedented intrusion on American democracy, the realities of partisan politics, and the flip-side fear of appearing political, overwhelmed America’s immune system.

Russia may attack again. Others will, too. They will be ever more sophisticated.

Next time, the powers that be cannot curl into a protective ball. They must react with resolve. Let the political chips fall where they may.