Why president Obama won't speak out on the Trayvon Martin slaying

[Enrique]

One thing that stands out about the Obama administration is really an extraordinary number of people explaining what the President of the United States CAN'T DO.

This column came the day before Obama made his beautiful statement:

http://www.eurweb.com/2012/03/why-president-obama-wont-speak-out-on-the-trayvon-martin-slaying/#comments

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

(...)

This adds to the misunderstanding of the law about Obama’s powers. But it doesn’t answer the question whether Obama has any moral obligation to speak out in the Martin killing. The painful answer to that is also no. As much as many would cheer the president if he breaks political protocol and weighs in on Martin, it won’t happen.

Obama, as all sitting presidents, doesn’t take positions on controversial state issues, and that’s the key. They are state issues, and to interfere is to step into a political minefield that would do far more harm than good. It would violate the rigid separation of federal and state powers. It would open the floodgate for any and every individual and group that has a legal wrong, grievance, or injustice to expect, even demand, that the president speak out on their cause. While tens of thousands nationally and globally are rallying behind the demand for arrest and prosecution of Zimmerman, there are millions more that quietly and openly demand that Florida officials resists any rush to judgment about the Martin killing.

Presidential statements on a controversial issue will polarize, and fuel political backlash. This would certainly be the case if Obama utters a word about Martin. In fact, the Martin slaying is a near textbook example of the fury and passion that racial leaden cases and issues always stir. Martin is African-American, and his self-admitted killer is non-black. Obama is African-American and there’s rarely been a moment during his tenure in the White House that he hasn’t been relentlessly reminded of that. The one time that he gingerly ventured into the minefield on a racially charged local issue was his mild rebuke of the white officer that cuffed Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates in 2009. The reaction was instant and rabid. Polls after his mild rebuke showed that a majority of whites condemned Obama for backing Gates and, even more ominously, expressed big doubts about his policies.

The president relearned a bitter lesson. If you speak out on an issue that involves race, police authority, and local law and local matters you will pay a heavy political price for it. While presidents have routinely spoken out on the deaths of police officers, political initiatives in states, and other local issues, there is no implication or inference of political partisanship or interference in a state matter. Speaking out on a controversial racial issue, as Martin is, would have a direct political inference, namely that the president is taking sides. In an election year, this would have be even more problematic. The GOP presidential contenders would be quick to pounce and would lambaste Obama as playing the race card and inflaming passions. Or, more charitably, that he was butting into an issue that he has no authority over, and that this is yet another example of the White House’s over reach on local matters.

(...)

[rainy day woman 69]

1. *Ahem*

Obama didn't really speak out on race before he was Prez, either. Except when he had to because of Rev. Wright. But live in La-La Land...

[lunatica]

2. And you know this how?

Because you have no idea what he said before he ran for President do you?

[freshwest]

5. *Ahem*

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=profile&uid=282546?=trans

[MrScorpio]

3. And who was responsible for pushing the Wright issue?

Or just about any other race-related issue as it applies to Obama?

You can easily say that one person is not responsible for playing the race card, and that person is Barack Obama. Am I correct?

Then how does he repeated find himself at the center of all these race related issues?

[Bluenorthwest]

4. Earl's gig is pontificating on why the President 'can't' do the right thing.

Here is another example from him, I hope to see him shown incorrect on this one too. Also from this week. It is Earl's message. 'The President, he can't'.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/why-president-obama-cant-_1_b_1355806.html