Al Sharpton has competition for being the boss of New York. Timothy Cardinal Dolan has now been drafted for the contest.
Again outsourcing city leadership, Mayor de Blasio recruited Dolan to gather religious leaders to help with the “healing and reconciliation between our police force and the community it serves,” Dolan said, echoing the mayor’s statement.
Sharpton sits at the top of the guest list, and therein sits de Blasio’s problem. If the city needs “healing,” it’s because de Blasio ceded too much power to Sharpton, especially over policing.
The mayor missed a chance to show courage. Had he quickly said no, hell, no, to Sharpton’s plan to close the Verrazano Bridge for a protest march, he would have shown himself to be the mayor of the whole city.
Instead, after talking to Sharpton, de Blasio belatedly said closing the bridge wasn’t a good idea, and allowed Sharpton to claim the high ground by announcing he would instead bus people to Staten Island.
Coming after Sharpton lectured de Blasio and top cop Bill Bratton at City Hall, the bridge fiasco is fueling doubts about the mayor’s judgment and conduct.
And the Post report showing the return of squeegee men to Gotham’s streets adds to the fear that 20 years of public-safety gains are vanishing before our eyes.
Religious leaders and rabble-rousers have roles to play, but nothing can substitute for strong political leadership.
Babes in arms: Born into hate
The culture of death marches on in Gaza, where Hamas leaders prepare to sacrifice another generation to jihad. The sight of children wearing the terror group’s uniform and carrying toy guns at a rally last week underscores a common lament among Israelis: Peace will come when Palestinians love their children more than they hate us.
Clearly, that day has not arrived.
Goldbricker in chief
The phrase “retiring in place” describes bureaucrats who basically stop doing their jobs, but don’t retire because that would mean giving up the income. Since almost nobody in government can be fired, they work at half-speed and get away with it.
Unfortunately, “retiring in place” also describes the president of the United States. Barack Obama is going through the motions in the Oval Office, and nobody can stop him.
In the most important ways, Obama has quit being president. He doesn’t negotiate with Congress, doesn’t manage or lead his administration and rarely talks to the American people about anything except the next election. Fund-raising and golfing increasingly dominate his schedule.
Scandal after scandal erupts in Washington, and he’s always the last to know, claiming to learn the facts through press accounts. He professes outrage and promises action, then rarely mentions the subject again.
Airstrikes in Iraq notwithstanding, he doesn’t even pretend to be engaged in major world events. The global chaos, including the creation of an Islamist state, genocide in Syria and Russia’s gobbling up of Ukraine, bores him. He doesn’t want to deal with these things, so they are not his problem. He’s the leader of the free world only when it suits him.
Which is to say, not very often. Even as the first bombs fell in Iraq, Obama was packing for another vacation on Martha’s Vineyard. He’s not about to let a little military action spoil a chance to enjoy the spoils.
His news conference with African leaders was such an absolute snooze that it produced no news. He gave perfunctory answers to perfunctory questions, suggesting even the press corps has given up on him.
He was so listless that one friend suggested the president looks clinically depressed.
He might be, and to judge from the polls, it’s contagious. The entire country is suffering the blues.
The broad discontent is captured in one survey showing that only 13 percent of the public, a record low, trusts the government to do what is right always or most of the time. Another found that nearly 75 percent are not sure their children’s lives will be better than their own.
Obama’s approval ratings stand at a mere 40 percent, and fall under 20 percent on some issues. Americans don’t trust his ability to lead the nation, and a majority don’t think he’s honest.
This is not an ordinary time, and these are not ordinary sentiments. They mark a crisis of confidence in America and, most of all, in its leader. Yet Obama doesn’t care enough to change course. He’s got the job for another 29 months, and his attitude is that those who aren’t happy should sue him.
He threatens to use executive power to do what he wants, substituting his judgment for the entire government. He calls his critics obstructionists and worse because they don’ t agree with him. Compromise is beneath him.
In another era, such behavior might be tolerable. The nation has survived other bad presidents, as was widely noted on the 40th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation.
But this time feels different. Because Obama’s lassitude and arrogance at home are matched by his vacillation and abdication abroad, the nation faces bone-crushing squeezes from within and without. There is too much stress on the machine for it not to break down, or crack up.
Since the end of World War II, the international system largely has been shaped and maintained by the United States. But in a few short years, Obama’s retreat and neo-isolationism have created a vacuum.
Vladimir Putin, Bashar al-Assad and the madmen from the Islamic State are rushing to fill it. If they succeed, the world may never recover.
Yet the president doesn’t seem to care.
All about Dollar Hill
Hillary Clinton has a money problem. No, she’s not “dead broke” again. Her problem is that almost every story about her is about money — how much she makes per speech ($250,000), how much she’s paying to rent in the Hamptons ($100,000 for three weeks) and how much it costs to attend a fund-raiser for the family foundation (up to $50,000).
Money is to her what sex is to teenage boys — always front and center. Google her name and “money” and you get 31,800,000 results.
She’s so associated with dough that The New York Times found it newsworthy when she gave a speech for free. It was for seven high-school students in Chappaqua, where she has a house. No word on whether she made them sign a pledge to donate their allowances.
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Swing and a miss
Block that metaphor!
In a scathing Washington Post op-ed, GOP Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee criticized Obama’s foreign policy, but struck out on baseball lingo. Corker wrote, “More often than not, the president doesn’t hit singles and doubles; he just balks.”