President Barack Obama has been second-guessed — big surprise there, right? — about his decision to attend a baseball game in Havana in the aftermath of the terror attacks in Brussels.
Republican presidential candidate John Kasich said if he was president, he would have packed upĀ hisĀ gear and returned to D.C. immediately to take charge of the U.S. response.
That’s fine, governor. Except that you aren’t the president. The man who’s in the hot seat now says quite clearly that the terrorists’ aim is to disrupt the lives of everyone in the world — and he would have none of it. As he told ESPN: “The whole premise of terrorism is to try to disrupt people’s ordinary lives …Ā it’s always a challenge when you have a terrorist attack anywhere in the world.”
Indeed, let’s look back at what President Bush said in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Didn’t he say quite the same thing, that we should go about our daily lives without fear? Didn’t say something like, “Go shopping”?
Barack Obama offered the nation’s support to the Belgians who are reeling in the wake of this horrific attack. He has dispatched military and intelligence officials to assist and help coordinate the pursuit of the monsters who did this deed.
As has been noted here and elsewhere, the president of the United States is never disconnected from the world.
So what if he went to a ballgame?
I’m pretty sure the state-of-the-art intelligence apparatus we all pay for is on the job.