MY USA TODAY COLUMN: The New York Times Deploys ‘Stray Voltage.’

Because when people are talking about gun control, they’re not talking about Obama’s many failures, ranging from the failures of vetting and counterterrorism that may have led to the San Bernardino attacks themselves, to Obama’s foreign policy debacles in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, to how the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag campaign against Boko Haram accomplished nothing, to how Putin is running wild in Eastern Europe, to Obama’s plans to import more poorly-vetted refugees from Muslim countries that foment terror or the still-anemic economy that has left far too many Americans unemployed or underemployed despite years of “recovery.”

Those are all things that the Obama Administration — and the Hillary Clinton campaign — don’t want to talk about. So the editorial board of the Times has pulled out all the stops to ensure that we talk about gun control instead. Gun control isn’t a great issue for the Democrats, but it’s better than all those other topics of discussion, and the expected angry response from the gun-rights community will ensure that people aren’t talking about topics that make the White House look bad.

Expect more of the same from Obama tonight.

UPDATE: Yeah, that’s what we got.