President Obama ended his annual escape to Hawaii this weekend, but who can blame him if he’s not in a hurry to return to the nation’s capital.
A Republican congress awaits him, which he has already warned may see his veto pen if it passes legislation he can’t stomach.
Then there’s foreign affairs.
Putin is still pouting. The Islamic State barbarians are still as vicious as ever. Iran says it has a long-distance drone it calls a flying bomb. The Afghanistan war is still raging on, even though the U.S. has declared the end of its combat mission. And, oh, there’s another commercial aircraft missing over the waters of Indonesia.
And this is what Obama will likely face before he even takes off his suit jacket back into the Oval Office.
There has been some speculation Obama is entering the twilight of his historic, two-term administration. But it seems clear there are many more days of light and darkness for the nation’s first Black president.
The roiling emotions that boiled over this summer and fall in Ferguson, Mo. after the death of Michael Brown has led to a new maelstrom. Fed by the chokehold case of Eric Garner in New York City—another incident where an unarmed Black man was killed by a White police officer—the Big Apple is on edge. After two police officers were fatally shot by a deranged a Black gunman whose delusional rants included retribution to police officers for Brown and Garner, police union leaders blamed N.Y. Mayor Bill de Blasio.
He had expressed empathy for protests after the officers in the Brown and Garner cases were not indicted. Union officials said de Blasio had police “blood on his hands.”
Obama had already waded into the fray. He had appointed Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey to lead a national panel on policing practices. The president also said recently he thinks a national discussion about race “probably is healthy.”
Ironically, Obama seems to have emerged from a midterm election shellacking in November, in which Republicans swept to control of both houses of Congress, stronger. He flexed his executive powers in unilateral moves on immigration, Internet neutrality, climate change and moving to normalize relations with Cuba after a half-century standoff.
If this is twilight, what took so long for him to get there?
(Reprinted from the Philadelphia Tribune)
