Henry Gates, the Police, and Obama's Bad Judgement (Again)

THINK before you SPEAK!

President Obama seems to be building on his record of bad judgement.  It all started with his comments regarding the bonuses contractually awarded to AIG executives.  His words helped to cause or inflame a sea of anger against those employees with some getting death threats.  Obama ended up backing away from his earlier statements.  Then we had another example after the presidential elections in Iran where Obama remained silent for the entire weekend before, after people in his administration began speaking out, he finally condemned the shooting and arrests of protesters.  Now we have the latest example: the arrest of a man for breaking into his own house (which was not known until after the police showed up).

Nobody is perfect and thus everyone is entitled to make mistakes or to have lapses in judgement.  However when you are President of the United States you shouldn’t open your mouth without carefully considering the effect those words can have (and to be smart enough to know this doubly applies to matters of “race”).

Originally Obama condemned the arrest of the black man by police:

Obama said Wednesday that Cambridge police “acted stupidly” during the disorderly conduct arrest of his friend, Henry Louis Gates Jr., in his own home near Harvard University.

 Obama backed off of his statements after a racial firestorm errupted:

President Barack Obama backed down on Friday from a statement that police had “acted stupidly” in arresting a black scholar in a racially charged case that was rapidly becoming a distraction for Obama.

“Because this has been ratcheting up and I obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up, I wanted to make clear in my choice of words I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sgt. Crowley specifically,” Obama said. “And I could have calibrated those words differently.”

Well… duh!  What I found most shocking was that Obama seemed to think this reaction would be a surprise:

“The fact that it has garnered so much attention, I think, is a testimony to the fact that these are issues that are still very sensitive here in America,”said Obama.

What this little incident shows is that President Obama does not seem to behave as if he is representing all Americans and that he should use caution when wading into a murky situation.  I am shocked that he would even say anything about this considering when a U.S. soldier was murdered in Arkansas by a Muslim claiming jihad he was virtually silent on the matter.  But jihad is not something Liberals like to address for what it is.  The issue for me has nothing to do with race but rather the stupid statements from someone who should know better and the 180 degree spin he put on when he was condemned by the police, the police unions, many blacks, and ordinary Americans.

So either he meant what he originally said but wouldn’t stand up for his remarks, he was playing the race card to score political points, or he just didn’t think before speaking.  Any of those possibilities don’t say much positive about him.