POLITICO — President Barack Obama is on high alert about Ebola, and doesn’t want anybody to think otherwise.
Any time Obama is campaigning or on vacation when something big goes wrong — from a downed plane to race riots — aides scoff at the idea that he is not focusing on his day job. Air Force One has a pretty good conference call feature. The president does his job from wherever he is, they say.
Recommended Stories
Not this time.
Now that two people in Dallas apparently have contracted Ebola from the Liberian man who died of the virus, the situation warranted scrapping what was to be his first rally of the midterm campaign season, along with a fundraiser for Senate Democrats who are clinging to their seats.
Optics, which Obama and his staff dismiss as never being much on their minds, always means a lot to this White House. Aides in the past have pointed out that any abrupt changes to Obama’s schedule have the potential to convey more of a crisis than may exist.
But facing the risk of embarrassing juxtapositions of dying health care workers while Obama was out campaigning, that’s exactly what they did.
Read more at Politico.
