Obama's Other Role: An Uncommon Scold
Riots in Ferguson, Missouri, draw President Obama into a familiar, although unwritten part of his job description: a blend of national healer and scold-in-chief.
It's always risky for a president to get involved in local disputes. But everybody looks to this president when a local dispute disrupts what the Constitution calls the "domestic tranquility," especially when the dispute involves questions of race.
After four nights of rioting over a racially charged shooting, there wasn't much tranquility in the working-class St. Louis suburb of Ferguson.
Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old, police said. But police offered no details -- including the officer's name or information about a convenience store robbery in which Brown was a suspect -- for almost a week.
In the meantime, protests over the shooting erupted into four nights of rioting and some looting that made Ferguson look like an uprising in the Gaza Strip.
A second controversy erupted, whether police in full riot gear and armored military vehicles further enflamed the violence with their militaristic handling of peaceful protesters -- including the arrests of two journalists and a St. Louis state senator.
By the time I heard that President Barack Obama was going to interrupt his vacation at Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, to say something about Ferguson, I was not surprised.
I only wondered how long it would take for his conservative critics to complain, regardless of what he said, that he was "dividing Americans by race."
The answer: not long.
Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham, guest hosting "The O'Reilly Factor," panned Obama's statement as the latest among "Obama administration interjections (that) have stoked racial discord in America" and increased mistrust between minorities and law enforcement.
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