By Bradford Williams
Long time Speaker of the House, Thomas "Tip" O'Neill, once declared, "All politics is local." This is an adage that President Obama seems to hold dear. In his first year in office, the president has involved himself in local issues ranging from his recent address to American school children to his "beer summit" between Cambridge police sergeant James Crowley and Harvard professor Luis Gates.
Most recently the president has asked New York's sitting governor, David Patterson, to bow out of the 2010 gubernatorial race due to Patterson's recently low approval ratings.
I see no harm in the president encouraging America's youth to work hard and stay in school, former presidents both Republican and Democrat have done the same.
I do find it difficult to believe that with an ongoing economic crisis, a raging debate over the future of health care in this country and a costly war in the Middle East, our president should be concerning himself with the celebrity antics of rapper Kayne West, whether his friend Professor Gates was disrespected by a Cambridge police or who will be New York's next Democratic candidate for governor.
Yes, presidents in the past have campaigned for members of Congress and even for gubernatorial candidates.
However, never has a president so publicly admonished a sitting governor as to ask him not to run for election or spoken so hastily about a local matter such as the Cambridge police officer's decorum on the job. Even professor Gates, the friend who Obama was defending, was surprised when the president first came out and said that the officer had "acted stupidly."
I contend that Mr. Obama needs focus on what is important right now, our need for quality health reform, sustainable economic growth and prudent foreign policy, not these trivial local issues.
His involvement in issues that quite frankly are below his pay grade is detracting from both local autonomy and important issues.
What's next? Is he going to tackle college football's lack of a playoff system?
Bradford Williamson is a senior political science major
