Charles Cooke of National Review Online reacts to the latest pronouncement from the 44th president.
I am grateful to Barack Obama for popping up in my feed from time to time to remind me why I never liked him:
“Although we don’t yet have the details about the motives behind last night’s shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner, it’s incumbent upon all us to reject the idea that violence has any place in our democracy. It’s also a sobering reminder of the courage and sacrifice that U.S. Secret Service Agents show every day. I’m grateful to them – and thankful that the agent who was shot is going to be okay.”
This message was built on top of a lie. At the time that this was posted — 5:15 p.m. ET last night — we did, in fact, know “the motives behind last night’s shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner.” We knew it because the shooter’s manifesto had been published, and because every news outlet in the country had reported on it. …
… Perhaps Obama thinks that, politically, the suspect’s politics do not matter? That’s a defensible position. Perhaps, like me, he thinks that everyday rhetoric should not be blamed for the actions of zealots. That’s defensible, too. Perhaps he is opposed to collective punishment. That’s admirable — if true. But it is also irrelevant, because, instead of saying any of those things, Obama said, “we don’t yet have the details about the motives,” and this was in no sense true.
Why does this annoy me? It annoys me because, as was also neatly illustrated by his advocacy during Virginia’s recent redistricting push, Barack Obama has mastered the art of being a vicious partisan while pretending to be judicious. To this day, Obama is held up by a certain sort of political commentator as the gold standard of what a politician should be. He is no such thing. He is — and he always was — a brawler with solid PR.
