The administration no-shows were not a failure of optics, or a diplomatic misstep, but were instead the logical result of the president's years-long effort to downgrade the threat of terrorism and move on to other things.
"The analogy we use around [the White House] sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a JV team puts on Lakers uniforms, that doesn't make them Kobe Bryant," Obama told the New Yorker magazine in a January 2014 interview. The president was referring to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria but was also suggesting in a broader sense that a number of post-9/11 offshoot terrorist organizations aren't worth the sort of war-footing mobilization that took place in the George W. Bush years.
******************************Fast forward to January 2015. The attackers at Charlie Hebdo magazine and the Hyper Cacher kosher market in Paris would undoubtedly qualify as JV-level terrorists under Obama's new classification. But their work was enough to shock Europe and motivate more than a million people to gather behind dozens of heads of state at the unity rally Sunday.
The White House reaction to the attacks in France, going back to the first reports of shots fired at Charlie Hebdo, has been noticeably subdued. Obama had scheduled last week as a time to roll out some upcoming State of the Union proposals in trips to Michigan, Arizona and Tennessee. When world events intruded, the president stubbornly stuck to his schedule, mentioning France only briefly before introducing his plan for free tuition at community colleges.
Then came the unity march. No, it was not essential that Obama himself attend. But there's no doubt he should have sent Vice President Joe Biden -- why is there a VP, if not to go to big foreign events? -- or at least Secretary of State John Kerry.
Even as the march wound its way through Paris, the White House sent out yet another sign of its unseriousness. On Sunday morning, the press office announced the president will host a "Summit on Countering Violent Extremism" on Feb. 18. The plan is to bring together "social service providers, including education administrators, mental health professionals, and religious leaders, with law enforcement agencies to address violent extremism as part of the broader mandate of community safety and crime prevention."
As the world watched images of black-clad, AK-47-wielding terrorists killing Parisians, Obama proposed to meet the threat with social service providers.
So when the president chose not to attend the Paris march, nor to send the Vice President or Secretary of State, the problem wasn't a tin-ear sense of public relations. It was Obama's actual attitude toward the terror threat facing not only Europe but the United States. We've dealt with the big stuff, Obama has declared, now let's move on.
A more complete, and a more dangerous, departure from reality is hard to imagine -- although I can't help noting that it mirrors this Administration's equally deluded approach to domestic crime. People who want to, and do, blow your head off out of hate, greed, or obsession are, you see, victims. And if you don't understand this, and answer them -- not with punishment but with emptying your pockets to provide "education" and "social services" -- then the problem is not them. It's you.
I believe Obama was watching the NFL playoffs. Maybe he isn't aware you get can all the nfl games on any Verizon mobile device. Go Hawks!
Ouch!
As for the Hawks: Seattle has three good things -- the Space Needle, its star deputy district attorney (a reader of this blog), and the fish market where guys throw these 30-pound fish to each other.
I have a family member who works in the King County Prosecutor's office, given the relative uncommon nature of my last name, I better tone down my comments lest there is any guilt be association.
I hope Obama can find time to do his job this weekend as both conference title games should be good ones (I really did read he was watching football).