Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste

Feathers are being ruffled over an opinion piece penned by President Obama in the Arizona Daily Star.  In the article, he calls for a “conversation” on gun control.  As I’d expect from him, it’s light on substance and heavy on condescension.

Some will say that anything short of the most sweeping anti-gun legislation is a capitulation to the gun lobby. Others will predictably cast any discussion as the opening salvo in a wild-eyed scheme to take away everybody’s guns. And such hyperbole will become the fodder for overheated fundraising letters.

At first, it seems a bit odd.  The rhetoric suggests he’s trying to make an appeal from the center, but he’s still playing to the crowd who elected him.  Taken as a whole, his statements are mildly insulting to everyone involved.

He doesn’t offer much in the way of an actual proposal.  In a nutshell, he wants the NICS system to run a little more efficiently.  That’s it.  It’s vague and non-threatening, which is exactly what he strives to be.  He’s not taking any risks, but he can tell the folks back home that he tried.

This the man’s greatest failing: he won’t commit to anything that might draw controversy.

That explains why he waited until two months after the Tuscon shooting to do this.  It would have been morbid and callous for him to have written this article back then, but he obviously feels the dust has settled enough to exploit it now.

He begins with a disingenuous claim that his administration has been supportive of the 2nd Amendment.

Now, like the majority of Americans, I believe that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms (…) in fact, my administration has not curtailed the rights of gun owners – it has expanded them, including allowing people to carry their guns in national parks and wildlife refuges.

It’s a clever piece of spin.  The real truth is that his administration was forced to swallow national park carry in return for getting the Credit Card Bill of Rights passed.  The President would never have signed a stand-alone bill allowing it, and his supporters in Congress would have done their best to stop it well short of even reaching his desk.

If the President wanted gun control, he should have pushed it at the beginning of his term.  It might have stood a chance then, but he’s lost control of Congress, and nothing he proposes would stand a chance in the House now.

It will take nothing short of a miracle (or a crisis he can actually handle) to get the current President elected for a second term. He’s deep in lame duck territory at the moment, which leaves him as more of a functionary than a leader. In this position, he can conceivably push some of his pet causes under the logic that he’s got nothing to lose.

Heck, if he wants to leave something for posterity, he could at least foster the impression that he went down fighting the evil gun lobby.

But he’s not LBJ, and this isn’t 1968.

So, let the guy write his op-eds. I’m keeping my eyes peeled, but I don’t see any reason to worry right now.