President Obama’s remarks Tuesday at a memorial service for police officers slain in Dallas last week should be a stand-out moment for his presidency, a time for him to help bring the nation together and heal after a horrifying rash of violence across the country.
But taking on the role of consoler-in-chief after a violent mass shooting has become all-too common for this president, making his task of soothing a nation on edge more difficult than ever.
His Dallas remarks will be the sixteenth time Obama has spoken publicly after an episode of extreme violence rocked the nation. After so many returns to the podium, even Obama has acknowledged the decreasing power of his words and those of others in the wake of so much bloodshed, especially when it comes to race.
Nearly one year ago, President Obama delivered one of the most moving and memorable speeches of his presidency when he paid tribute to Rev. Clementa Pickney, a black pastor, and eight other victims of a mass murder at a black church in Charleston.
He earned high marks for the speech, which ended with Obama singing “Amazing Grace.”
In those remarks, he didn’t push for another “conversation” about race in America, and said the country already talks a lot about race. “We don’t need more talk,” he said.
But with the country more politically divided than ever and gridlock still gripping Washington, Obama hasn’t yet found a more effective response than more talk. And this week, he’s returning for a few more discussions.
After Obama cut short his European trip over the weekend, the White House said Monday he planned to hold a summit Wednesday for law enforcement and community leaders to continue the dialogue he has tried to foster for the last few years.
He hopes to advance the conversation and find “specific solutions to repairing the bonds of trust that have frayed in so many communities between law enforcement officials and the citizens that they have sworn to serve and protect,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.
Earnest also said it’s time to re-energize communities across the country to implement best practices recommendations from the 21st Century Policing Task Force Obama created after the firestorm over Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri two years ago.
Even as Earnest touted the benefits of the task force’s recommendations in helping communities strengthen trust and collaboration, he also tacitly acknowledged their limits. Dallas, he said, is actually one of the cities that has integrated many of the task force’s best practices, and as a result, it has seen a decline in violent crime and complaints against police.
The recent wave of deadly shootings and violent clashes between police and the black community will only end, Obama has repeatedly argued, when society tackles underlying social and economic issues at the heart of the problems. But so far, the president hasn’t been able to harness the power of the bully pulpit to bring the nation together and unify behind a solution.
After race riots erupted in Baltimore last year in the wake of Freddie Gray’s mysterious death while in police custody, Obama called on America to come together to address the underlying problems of unemployment, drug addiction and fatherless homes — the result, he said, of stiff prison terms for non-violent drug offenders.
Still, he offered few concrete prescriptions, explaining that he didn’t expect the Republican-controlled Congress to start tackling the issue of black poverty.
“Now, I’m under no illusion that out of this Congress we’re going to get massive investments in urban communities, and so we’ll try to find areas where we can make a difference around school reform and around job training and some investments in infrastructure in these communities and trying to attract new businesses,” he said.
Backed by the White House, an overhaul of sentencing guidelines is at the heart of the criminal justice reform bill that has gained traction in Congress this year, uniting such political foes as conservative firebrand Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J. The push, however, has faltered in recent weeks.
Obama is expected to redouble his efforts to revive that measure in the wake of the Dallas police slayings and the police shootings of black men Philando Castile in Minnesota and Alton Sterling in Louisiana. Earnest also suggested Obama would amplify his call for more funds for police departments to acquire body cameras.
After the Dallas police ambush last week, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., acknowledged that all of America would like to see less gun violence and warned against letting the tragedy “harden our divisions.”
The president, however, could jeopardize the bipartisan good will if the he continues to hit Republicans for blocking gun-control measures and failing to confront the “racial disparities” in the criminal justice system.
House Republicans Monday put off a debate on a gun-control bill that would have blocked suspected terrorists from buying a firearm, worried that a contentious debate in the wake of the last week’s gun violence would further inflame tensions across the country.
A reporter pressed Earnest Monday on whether Obama will talk about gun control during his remarks this week, noting that critics have argued that by raising the issue the president is further polarizing the nation.
Critics on both sides of the aisle have pointed out that the sniper who attacked the police was a 25-year-old Army veteran trained in firearms with no criminal record, so “common-sense” bipartisan steps like stricter background checks wouldn’t have stopped him from purchasing the weapon.
Earnest, however, showed no sign of retreat on the issue.
“I think [the president] is keenly aware that there are politicians in Washington, D.C., that when it comes to significant incidents of gun violence, that they close their eyes and they hold their ears and they wish it away,” he said. “They hope the people won’t notice.”
“If there were a willingness to just try to focus on some common-sense things, we can make progress on gun violence in this country,” he said.
