-Caveat Lector-
>From http://www.msnbc.com/news/824458.asp?0sl=-10&cp1=1
Safe harbor: The Manassas Sharks, an 8-and- under team in the Manassas Youth Football
League, has taken to practicing under the watchful eyes of soldiers at the Army's Fort
Belvoir, Va.
Sniper crisis demands more from president
Politics behind Bush’s lack
of high-profile involvement
COMMENTARY
By Howard Fineman
SPECIAL TO MSNBC.COM
WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 — Dismiss this as special pleading if you want, but I have a
question for the president as the sniper’s murder toll reaches 10 in our region and my
kids
are huddled indoors after school instead of being at Little League or tennis practice:
Why in
this crisis haven’t I heard more from you and seen more action from your crime-
busting,
terrorism-fighting White House? I thought providing “Homeland Security” is what your
presidency is about.
WHEN THE RADIO alarm clock buzzes every
morning at 6:55 a.m., and the news snaps on, my wife, kids and I have two only
questions
as we surface from sleep. Did they catch the sniper? Did he shoot anybody else? I know
that any family in any poverty-stricken neighborhood of any American inner city is in
greater
danger — and always has been — than we are in these tense days.
Still, it’s a shame that any kid has to lose what little is left is of his or her
carefree
innocence in a culture that robs them of all too much of it to begin with. And to have
the
police divulge as they did just now that they’ve received a warning that “your
children are
not safe anywhere at any time” makes matters worse.
My wife and I always felt that one of the blessings we could bestow upon our
children
was their status as native Washingtonians. We felt lucky to live here, and lucky to
rear them
in the beautiful, historic, culturally rich and inspiring capital. The al-Qaida crimes
of Sept.
11, 2001, and the (still unsolved) anthrax attacks gave us pause, but not much: This
was,
perhaps, the price of living at the Ground Zero of global decision-making. But, for
the first
time, the suburban sniper makes me wonder if we wouldn’t have been better off
elsewhere.
The need for a high-profile administration presence seems pretty clear. The sniper
is
crisscrossing a river and a jumble of jurisdictions- two states, a federal district, a
half-
dozen counties and cities — making unified command and control impossible. I hope I am
proved wrong — the sooner the better — but it seems to me that none of the local police
seems quite up to getting a handle on the whole thing. What’s needed is a comprehensive
view; and only the feds, led by a demanding president and attentive attorney general,
can
provide it.
I’ve heard the excuses and explanations. I know that the FBI, ATF and others are
in on
the case. I know the FBI agent-in-charge says that nothing would be gained from
“federalizing” it. I know that there is a prosecutorial reason not to do so: There is
no simple
federal murder statute(murder is generally a matter of state law), and none of the
“special
circumstance” federal murder charges is applicable — so far. That means that the feds,
if
and when they catch the sniper or snipers, would have to try him or them on a lesser
charge.
Still, I admit it: I want the real-life FBI equivalent of Tommy Lee Jones in the
“Fugitive,”
vowing to search “every courthouse, every henhouse and every outhouse” from Baltimore
to Richmond until the lurking evildoer is caught.
FITFUL, BLAND REMARKS
I know George W. Bush reasonably well, and know that, despite his rootin’ tootin’
rhetoric, he isn’t a callous man. But does he understand the paralyzing fear that
pervades
his (temporarily) adopted city? It’s hard to tell, at least judging by the fitful,
bland and
distant remarks emanating from the White House.
Why? Well, the president is obviously busy. He has a
war to plan (or at least threaten) in Iraq. He has the little matter of North Korea on
his
plate. He is racing around the country trying to get more Republicans elected to
Congress.
He and every president lives with the idea of a life- threatening personal attack every
minute: That’s what the Secret Service is in business to prevent.
But there are other explanations. For the most part, presidents consider themselves
aloof from Washington as a city and a region. The only president who lived here
full-time
after his presidency was Woodrow Wilson. Most presidents get elected by running against
Washington. They are outsiders and prefer to remain that way. That is especially true
of
this president and this White House. Bush can’t wait to get out of town, and he is not
a man
about town in the manner of Bill Clinton or, indeed, Bush’s own father. Most people
tend to
regard Washington as a haughty and hard-to- know place, somehow not quite America —
and presidents don’t want to bother trying to convince the Heartland otherwise.
MICRO, MACRO POLITICS
I think there is a political angle as well — both micro and macro — in Bush’s
hesitancy to
take a higher profile on the case. In the Maryland suburbs, Democrat Kathleen Kennedy
Townsend is running for governor on a platform that increasingly features gun-control,
including new measures to trace sniper-type guns and ammo. The more urgency the
president brings to the case, the more attention is devoted to a topic that Republicans
would rather avoid.
The macro reason I sense from talking with one of the
president’s top political aides. Karl Rove & Co. sort of like the way things are going
in the
congressional races right now: All the Iraq talk has had the effect of fragmenting the
electoral season’s thematics, with no single topic around which to unify the
opposition to
the president. His cautious political advisers don’t want to do anything to change that
dynamic. Why risk getting more deeply involved in a case that might still take days,
weeks
or months to solve?
There is another reason why the White House hasn’t said much, I think. Karen Hughes
isn’t there anymore. The counselor to the president has a sure touch for Main Street
worries — perhaps because she is the devoted mother of a 15-year-old son, Robert. She
and her family lived a more of less normal life in Northwest DC. But they moved back to
Austin, Texas, last summer. And for Robert, it’s a good thing. He wouldn’t be able to
play
outside, either.
Howard Fineman is Newsweek’s chief political correspondent and an NBC News analyst.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A<>E<>R
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