Obama spokesman Josh Earnest did indeed try to “clean this up,” two days later, by changing the subject.

“The point that the president was making is not that he didn’t know Secretary Clinton’s e-mail address — he did — but he was not aware of the details of how that e-mail address and server had been set up, or how Secretary Clinton and her team were planning to comply with the Federal Records Act,” Earnest said.

Try that technique on your wife sometime when she finds out you were at a blonde’s house when you said you were going to church. “I didn’t mean to say I was at Holy Name — I wasn’t — but I just want to clarify that I was not aware of what year the church was built.”

Despite the sacred sheen of Obama idealism that the media have been struggling to keep polished all these years, our president is an ordinary politician who lies for the same reason other pols do. He thinks whatever means he uses are justified by the ends — his awesome mission to make America a better place.