Well, Something Sure Was ‘Ill Chosen’

“I could’ve calibrated those words differently.”

This is how President Obama hopes to defuse the the controversy he created, when he decided to basically tag some cops in Massachusetts as at least stupid, if not racist.  Yes, I know he didn’t exactly call the cops racist, but he did link their “stupid” behavior with the “long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately.”  How did brilliant Mr. Obama expect people to take his statement?  He was saying that either the cops were stupid for arresting Gates knowing how it would look, or that the arrest itself was stupid (i.e., wrong) and they only did it because they must be racist.  Either way, it was a ridiculous thing for him to say without (as he admitted) having all the facts.

Obama conceded his words had been ill-chosen, but he stopped short of a public apology.

In typical spin-it-as-somebody-else’s-problem form, the White House has said the president “would regret distracting [the media] with obsessions,” when asked about his comments.  Right, that’s the problem with what he said, that it’s going to cause the obsessive media to be distracted.  It’s not that he unjustifiably labeled some cops as racist (whether intentionally or not) and stupid.  It’s not that he stoked racial tensions, without even knowing what the heck he was talking about.  It’s not that he, the leader of our government, reactively called into question the integrity of law enforcement in America.  No.  It’s that he drew some attention away from the disaster that his health care reform proposal is becoming.  I’m sure he really regrets that.

“Could’ve calibrated those words differently,” comes up way short of what is required here to make this right.  How about that fresh candidness that you were supposed to be bringing to politics, Mr. President?  “I’m the one who acted stupidly, by stoking racial tensions unnecessarily.”  That would be more like it.

One by one, this president is destroying every reason that a large number of moderate Democrats, independents, and even some Republicans were able to support him, or at least hope that he would be something different.  Great work.