In March of 2010, President Obama cancelled a trip to Australia and Indonesia because so he could stay in Washington to work on passing health care reform. He rescheduled the trip for June, but he cancelled again because of the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. (See here.) According to the Associated Press:
“Obama had to weigh the risk of again putting off two allies in a strategic part of the world against the problems of crossing the globe while the devastation from the nation's largest oil spill continued - including the expectation of a political backlash at home.
The domestic agenda proved dominant.”*
On the other hand, last Friday President Obama ordered military strikes against Libya and later that evening left for a five-day tour of Latin America. While the administration said that the President could be kept informed of what was happening over Libya while he was gone (here and here), there was one thing he couldn’t do all that well from South America: Explain to the American people why we were doing this. There are reasons for doing it, but we needed to hear those reasons from the President from Washington, D.C. Instead, on Monday we had President Obama trying to explain to the American people why he was sending troops to bomb Libya while standing next to the President of Chile, in a press conference in Santiago, Chile.
So, here are President Obama’s apparent priorities:
Health care reform versus foreign trip: health care reform.
Controlling the political backlash from the Gulf oil spill versus foreign trip: controlling the political backlash from the Gulf oil spill.
Staying in Washington after sending airmen to bomb Libya and explaining to the American people why we are going to war versus foreign trip: foreign trip.
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* The link in my June 6, 2010 post to the Associated Press quotation no longer works. However, see this quote from The New Zealand Herald of June 5, 2010: “Although no reason has officially been given for this latest delay, commentators believe Obama is staying for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill now consuming Washington politics."
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