As Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to flaunt American and other exhortations to retreat from the Ukranian territory of Crimea, the actions, or lack thereof, of President Obama have become increasingly scrutinized. MSNBC's Alex Wagner, however, trotted out a variety of excuses during her program Tuesday to help paint the President's perceived paralysis in a more flattering light:

You know, Mark, a lot has about the administration's foreign policy in recent weeks and especially recent days, a lot of it has been critical of the President. and I'm sort of the camp that, you know, I'm not sure if the president could have done anything to prevent Vladimir Putin from doing what he was going to do, but it puts the White House in a position where their foreign policy seems incredibly reactive and has though, for almost the recent past, I mean, years at this point, we know through rhetoric that the president has wanted to pivot to Asia but events beyond his control has forced him to look to the middle east and eastern Europe, and one gets sense perhaps his heart has never been in it, he hasn't truly organized or articulated a foreign policy the way that he perhaps would if it was another region of the world.

Wagner's apologetic defense of the President's ineffectiveness is out of step with other traditional White House allies. Dana Milbank of the Washington Post even admitted that the President has been "inconsistent and indecisive." But then, perhaps Milbank hadn't paused to consider whether such an appraisal was fair, given that the President's "heart has never been in it."