In two weeks’ time, both major parties will have officially chosen their nominees and running mates. And in November, when American voters choose how to cast their ballots for president, they will surely take policies and the candidates’ personalities into consideration.
But they also have another question to answer, and it is not a frivolous one. Do they want four more years of leaders who respond to crisis by delivering self-righteous lectures to them about their faults?
We raise this point especially after Obama’s speech at the memorial for the five officers killed in Dallas, which started off with a lot of promise but quickly devolved into what we’ve all come to expect. After his praise for the five fallen heroes and a denunciation of those who try to paint “all police as biased or bigoted,” he couldn’t help but remind the spouses, children and parents of the slain that their killer was at least partly right about cops.
“[N]one of us is entirely innocent” of racism, Obama told the assembled mourners of police officers murdered by a bitter man who showed up specifically to murder as many white cops as possible. “No institution is entirely immune, and that includes our police departments.”
“[W]e cannot simply turn away and dismiss those in peaceful protest as troublemakers or paranoid,” he added later, addressing the dead officers’ colleagues, who had worked constructively with with Black Lives Matter protestors and stood by their side for hours before defending them when the first shots were fired.
And then, of course, gun control: “We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book,” he said, an absurd statement that doesn’t even hold up as hyperbole.
And keep in mind, this was at the actual memorial service for the five officers. It became an occasion for more of Obama as usual, using crises to aid all the same causes and ideas he would be promoting even if nothing had happened.
Weeks earlier, in his remarks after the Islamic State-inspired massacre in Orlando, Obama again showed no evidence that even that horrific event could change his thinking about anything or force him toward introspection. He instead did the usual, droning on about gun control, talking up a flagrantly unconstitutional, discriminatory and gimmicky gun control proposal that Democrats hope to use to win a few extra votes in the next election. He essentially blamed Americans for having or demanding too many rights, never mind his own consistent underestimation of the enemy that inspired the attack. He noted specifically that he would stay the course with his current strategy against the Islamic State, ineffective as it had been to date.
His language betrayed his business-as-usual demeanor: “As we all know … As I’ve said before … the measures we continue to take … this continues to be….”
Hillary Clinton reacted to Orlando in much the same way. She promoted the exact same “no-fly-list” gun gimmick. On CNN, she blamed the “gun lobby” and the “weapon of war” that a religious fanatic had used to mow down clubgoers. She blamed the fact that “it doesn’t require a permit to purchase a gun” in Florida, even though the killer had a permit through his work as a security guard. She blamed private sales that can be conducted without a background check in some states, even though no such sale was involved in this or any other recent mass shooting. She called for restoration of the cosmetic Assault Weapons Ban that expired a decade ago, a measure universally acknowledged as ineffective in curbing gun crime.
Unfortunately, Americans will not have a choice of whether they witness more Islamic terrorism or more terrorism against police. But they will have a choice of whether they will be talked down to in this manner by their leaders.
Unless they want four more years of this, they should be very wary of the way Clinton, like Obama, immediately resorts to pre-recorded liberal nostrums and shifts the blame when tragedy strikes.
