President Obama is under growing pressure to travel to Ferguson, Mo., in the wake of a grand jury declining to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown.
However, Obama’s hesitance to visit a St. Louis suburb simmering with racial tensions is driven by clear pitfalls, particularly for a president who has been burned before by wading into similar controversies.
Obama could bring healing to a community where residents have long harbored mistrust of law enforcement, say those who want Obama to travel to Missouri. Detractors counter that Obama might inject politics into a local matter and add more fuel to clashes that have already spiraled out of control.
The White House on Tuesday said that a presidential trip to Ferguson was “under consideration” but that Obama would wait until “things calm down a little bit” before determining whether to go there.
It didn’t take long for Obama to see the downside of directly confronting the Ferguson crisis. In calling for peaceful protests after the grand jury’s decision, the president was relegated to second billing, his message drowned out by images of protesters torching buildings and police cruisers.
And even some of those closest to the president cautioned against him traveling to Ferguson with emotions so raw right now.
“I’d hold back,” a former senior administration official told the Washington Examiner. “I really don’t think there’s much he can do right now. Give it a few days, take the temperature, and make sure you’re actually doing some good.”
“If it gets worse while he’s there, who do you think gets the blame?” added another Democratic operative with close ties to the White House.
It’s a tough balancing act for Obama.
As the nation’s first black president, Obama has certainly been called upon to address sensitive issues of race in a way that his predecessors were not. And Obama has also faced criticism for not doing more to address the concerns of the civil rights community, especially as it relates to the police shooting of Brown.
Now that local charges won’t be filed against Wilson, Obama could talk more freely without the worry of influencing an ongoing investigation. Although, the Obama Justice Department is still weighing whether to bring a civil rights case against the Ferguson Police Department.
Obama himself was quick to point out that “we are a nation built on the rule of law,” and he must be careful not to undermine a grand jury that determined there wasn’t sufficient evidence to bring charges against Wilson.
In other words, any potential Obama visit to Ferguson could be viewed as a rebuke of the grand jury’s findings.
It’s a situation not all that different from when Obama declined to put the spotlight back on the killing of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin after neighborhood watch coordinator George Zimmerman was found not guilty of the crime.
Roughly a year after Obama declared, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” he said simply that a “jury has spoken.”
In the immediate aftermath of the Brown shooting, Obama sent Attorney General Eric Holder to Ferguson, hoping to avoid accusations that he was trying to influence the legal deliberations.
His careful approach was shaped by previous missteps.
In 2009, Obama accused a police officer who arrested Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates inside his own home of acting “stupidly.” When more facts emerged, Obama dialed down his remarks and hosted a “beer summit” at the White House between the two men, looking to put the embarrassing situation behind him.
Still, others said Obama was abdicating his leadership responsibilities by not standing with the residents of Ferguson during this critical time.
“When the sun goes down tonight in Ferguson, Mo., the nation’s first African-American president should be there,” wrote Dan Schnur, director of the University of Southern California’s Unruh Institute of Politics. “Not because he can single-handedly prevent another outbreak of violence or magically heal the nation’s racial divisions but because the opportunity exists to lead — not with executive orders and legislative strategy but with words.”
And Obama might leave his political base fuming if he holds out much longer on visiting Ferguson.
“This decision seems to underscore an unwritten rule that black lives hold no value; that you may kill black men in this country without consequences or repercussions,” said Congressional Black Caucus chairwoman, Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, of the grand jury’s decision. “This is a frightening narrative for every parent and guardian of black and brown children, and another setback for race relations in America.”
