On a trip to Ireland during the 1990s, I was struck by how little public discussion there was about “The Troubles.” Coming from New York, I expected the dispute between Catholic Ireland and Protestant Northern Ireland to be the topic of the day, every day.
Back home, I asked an Irish-American friend why Ireland seemed less engaged — and enraged — than New York. He fairly spat out his answer: “That’s because if they talk about it, they’ll have to do something about it.”
My friend’s disgust came to mind as I watched President Obama dance around Russian involvement in the downing of the Malaysian airliner.
The basic facts were well known, yet just when you thought he would announce a firm American response, he pulled back, saying things such as he didn’t “want to get ahead of the facts,” and demanding an “honest investigation.”
To admit the truth would force him to do something. And we clearly have the wrong president for that kind of leadership, as events around the world illustrate.
From Ukraine to Iraq, from Syria to Asia and Latin America, not to mention our own southern border, the world is in chaos, and the president dithers, hesitates and then goes golfing.
Obama’s halting performance Friday was more typical than shocking. Time and again, he treats major events as annoying distractions from the things he’d rather talk about. Well into the sixth year of his presidency, he resists accepting the fact that even a president doesn’t always get to choose.
The fact that he is not fully engaged in the job is now so obvious that some Democrats concede the point. Yet his detachment has been there all along, hiding in plain sight.
The tag of “no drama Obama” emerged during the 2008 campaign, when his staff marveled at how he kept his calm during political turbulence. From the Rev. Jeremiah Wright revelations to the meltdown of the economy, Obama made only brief detours before getting back on message. His script called for “investments” in education and energy and ending the war in Iraq, and he stuck to that script.
His coolness seemed a virtue, especially compared to John McCain’s combustibility. But nowadays, the coolness looks like indifference bordering on contempt.
How else to explain his decision to go to fund-raisers Thursday night, only hours after the horror in Ukraine?
Better yet, consider what Valerie Jarrett once said. The aide and longtime friend described the president to biographer David Remnick in terms that make the Oval Office sound beneath Obama.
“I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is,” Remnick quoted her as saying. “He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is.”
She goes on in that vein, adding: “He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”
Or even ordinary presidents, apparently.
In Federalist Paper No. 70, Alexander Hamilton argued for an American leader with vast powers, one driven by dual senses of responsibility and accountability.
He called that quality “Energy in the Executive” and said it was “a leading character in the definition of good government.”
Such a leader, he wrote, “is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks” and other dangers, including “the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction and of anarchy.”
Hamilton also acknowledged the risks if the unitary executive failed to carry out his duties. “A feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever it may be in theory, must be, in practice, a bad government.”
Hmmm, a feeble executive running a bad government. Does that ring a bell?
DeBlasio’s Home away from home
To go, or not to go? If so, when?
A fly on the wall would have heard a frantic debate among Mayor de Blasio’s inner circle about his planned trip to Italy. The decision to put it off for a day reflected a belated, if still incomplete, grasp of the complexities, including the optics.
To wit, it wouldn’t look good for a progressive mayor to be pictured on a European vacation while the city boiled over.
The death of a Staten Island man in police custody sparked the delay, but any number of events could have qualified. While there is never a perfect time for a mayor to go away for 10 days, some are decidedly better than others. Six months into the job, during a summer shooting surge, is one of the worst.
The police case makes the point. Two of the cops who arrested Eric Garner, who is black, and put him in a chokehold were put on desk duty while the DA and the NYPD investigate. The incident was captured on video by a witness, and the mayor rightly called Garner’s death a “tragedy.” Although he and Police Commissioner William Bratton suggested the cops were wrong, they wisely stopped short of declaring them guilty.
Cops, like everybody else in America, are presumed innocent, as former Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg frequently reminded New Yorkers. It’s more than a legal point. Cops make split-second decisions of life and death, and too much second-guessing can make them timid.
Of course, de Blasio ran on an anti-police agenda, and that raises another question about the vacation: If the Garner case, or one like it, happened while he was away, would he rush home to deal with it?
The correct answer is yes, which is why he shouldn’t have gone.
Swindle-Me-Elmo has to go
Squeegee men now wear costumes. They are dressed as Elmo, Mickey Mouse and the Statue of Liberty — but they’re still public pests.
That’s the meaning of the Post report showing that cartoon characters and aggressive hawkers have turned Times Square into an unsettling gauntlet for tourists and New Yorkers alike.
What began as irrepressibly zany has morphed into a quality-of-life issue that, thankfully, has police attention. What they will do isn’t clear, but the sense of menace is intolerable.
That was true of the real squeegee men, who harassed motorists for a tip in exchange for making your windshield dirtier. They symbolized a city out of control and the realization that the small stuff wasn’t so small when it came to making people feel safe, or not.
So it was, and so it is again.
Hill’s money talks loudly
Hillary Clinton’s name produces many word associations, but the latest is among the least flattering: money-grubber.
The diva-like contract for a speech at SUNY’s University at Buffalo — $275,000 for her plus $1,000 for a stenographer — is so far out on the spectrum of excess that it is impossible to defend. And remember, she began the whole episode by claiming she and hubby were “dead broke” when they left the White House.
Now she may be too rich to get back.