Sometimes a round of golf is just a round of golf. And sometimes it reveals the essence of a man.
President Obama’s decision to hit the links and yuk it up with pals immediately after speaking about the beheading of James Foley was no ordinary mistake. Nor was it a simple gaffe.
The decision continues to cause an uproar because, like an X-ray, there is no escaping the image. It shows there is no there there.
With even his media praetorian guard appalled, the golf outing is sparking a wider understanding that Obama is hollow, empty of the routine qualities Americans expect from their president.
Simple decency and respect for Foley’s horrified parents should have been enough to sober him. If that didn’t do it, the realization that the Islamic State had declared war on America in the most gruesome fashion imaginable should have sounded a call of duty in his head.
Instead, Obama continued with his vacation and was photographed looking as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Suddenly, that megawatt smile that often charmed voters wasn’t so charming. It was vacuous.
He looked like an empty-headed frat boy, numb to the world.
Maybe that’s not just an appearance. Maybe it’s the truth. Maybe that’s all there is.
It is a bitter idea to consider. To say he is a failed president, even unfit, does not rule out the possibility he deeply wants to measure up but doesn’t know how.
But what if it’s worse than that? What if, after six years of frustration and failure, he’s just not into being president anymore?
Bill Clinton told Americans, “I feel your pain.” What if Obama doesn’t give a whit what Americans feel?
As commander in chief, Obama swore to defend the nation. Yet the rise of the demonic cult calling itself Islamic State has barely stirred him.
The group he once ridiculed as being like the al Qaeda junior varsity has achieved what Osama bin Laden never did: It controls a huge swath of territory in Syria and Iraq. It is so bloodthirsty that some jihadist groups shun its brand of barbarism as too indiscriminate.
Most important, it makes threats against America, saying, “We will drown all of you in blood.” It vows to raise its black flag over the White House and threatened Chicago and other cities.
All of this, especially the beheading of Foley and the threat to kill another American journalist it holds, are aimed at stopping even modest US support for the Iraqi army.
Yet the president, after giving a perfunctory speech about the horror of it all, shrugged his shoulders. Later, his attorney general said a criminal investigation had been opened, as if the beheading was just a crime.
It is hard to fathom what Obama is doing or thinking. No explanation comes close to being satisfactory.
With fellow Democrats faulting him, and with threats to America multiplying, it is impossible to excuse his conduct on the grounds of ignorance. If he only knows what the public sees, that would be more than enough to develop a strategy.
Indeed, it’s possible his military advisers are going public with terrifying claims about the terrorist group because they, too, are alarmed by his passivity. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, normally low-key, said of the Islamic State: “This is beyond anything that we’ve seen. So we must prepare for everything.”
Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called it “an organization that has an apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision that will eventually have to be defeated.”
His use of the word “defeated” was in contrast to Obama, who talked only of “containing” the Islamic State when he approved limited airstrikes.
There was, of course, another response from the president last week. After the storm started over the golf outing, White House officials confirmed there had been a secret raid to free Foley and others in July, but it failed.
The release of such classified information ignited a second round of fury, with not a few critics accusing the president of playing politics.
Nonsense. He doesn’t care about politics. The raid was revealed to protect the only thing he does care about: himself.
Critics silenced by Eva Moskowitz’s undeniable ‘Success’
There she goes again, embarrassing all the educrats in New York with their silly excuses. Damn that Eva Moskowitz!
Having already outmaneuvered Mayor de Blasio by getting Gov. Cuomo and the Legislature to make sure her charter schools are housed and funded, Moskowitz won’t give her critics a break. The latest test results confirm that, haters notwithstanding, she has a secret sauce for excellence.
Ninety-four percent of the students in her Success Academy network who took state exams scored proficiently on math, and 64 percent were proficient in English.
In the rest of the city, only 35 percent of students scored that high in math, and only 29 percent in English.
Among the top 10 schools for math in the whole state, four were hers. That’s remarkable.
And, to her critics, infuriating.
In a better world, they would follow her around night and day, clipboard in hand, to find out how she does it. Or they could simply ask her, if they really wanted to know.
“Joyful rigor,” she told one interviewer, cleverly puncturing the silly claim that her kids are slaves to numbers and don’t have fun.
The attacks by de Blasio peaked last winter, but the cold war lingers. The mayor insists that closing the racial achievement gap is the key to improving upward mobility for black and Latino children, yet refuses to learn from the person actually doing it. He is so sour that Moskowitz tells me she didn’t even get a simple “well done” from City Hall.
Shame on the mayor for making ideology and pique more important than student achievement.
De Blasio, council throws taxpayers under the bus
Take that civics lesson about checks and balances and throw it out the window. That’s the meaning of the City Council’s landslide vote to give $42 million to school-bus companies.
The giveaway, which Mayor de Blasio pushed, will pay union scale to drivers, matrons and mechanics at 16 companies. Former Mayor Bloomberg eliminated the pay requirements, including seniority, from bus contracts to save money, but de Blasio vowed to restore them, at a cost of hundreds of millions over time.
There was little resistance in the council, with the vote 41-6. Now that all of City Hall speaks with one radical voice, who will protect taxpayers?
Try nobody.
Hamas’ unholy slaughter at Gaza mosque
Hamas executed 18 Palestinians in Gaza it accused of spying for Israel, with one Web site describing a grisly scene: “The victims, their heads covered and hands tied, were shot dead by masked gunmen dressed in black in front of a crowd of worshippers outside a mosque after prayers.”
That must have been quite a prayer service.