Barack Obama’s French kiss-off - Edward-Isaac Dovere - POLITICOBarack Obama’s French kiss-off - Edward-Isaac Dovere - POLITICO





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White House

Barack Obama’s French kiss-off
The president's decision to skip the Paris march raises eyebrows. 


By Edward-Isaac Dovere
1/11/15 6:26 PM EST







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Barack Obama n’est pas Charlie — or at least, he wasn’t this weekend. Don’t look for the president or vice president among the photos of 44 heads of state who locked arms and marched down Boulevard Voltaire in Paris. Nor did they join a companion march the French Embassy organized in Washington on Sunday afternoon.
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Indeed, Obama’s public reactions to the attacks in Paris last week have been muted. His initial response Wednesday to the killing of 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper offices was delivered as he sat calmly in an armchair in the Oval Office speaking about the “cowardly” acts and defending freedom of the press. Two days later, as a gunman took hostages and went on to kill four people in a kosher grocery, Obama took a few seconds away from a community college proposal rollout in Tennessee because he said with events unfolding, “I wanted to make sure to comment on them” — but neither then nor afterward specifically condemned that attack. Obama wasn’t far from the march in D.C. on Sunday that wended silently along six blocks from the Newseum to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial. Instead, he spent the chilly afternoon a few blocks away at the White House, with no public schedule, no outings. Joe Biden was back home in Wilmington, Delaware. Neither they nor any high-level administration official attended either event. France’s top diplomat in the U.S. tried, diplomatically, to make the best of it. “Thank you to Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary at the Department of State, who has represented the U.S. Authorities at the demonstration in DC. A friend,” Ambassador Gérard Araud tweeted Sunday evening, as criticism of the administration mounted. (Also on POLITICO: Senior official: Kerry Paris trip 'in the works' before march) And though it’s symbolism — Obama made several statements last week condemning the terror, and the government has been supporting French efforts throughout — the symbolism has caught a lot of attention. “I wish our US President had gone to Paris to stand with our European allies,” tweeted James Stavridis, the retired Navy admiral and current dean of Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. “It’s stunning, truly stunning,” said Aaron David Miller, who among other responsibilities during his time at the State Department under both Republican and Democratic administrations, helped deliberate over which officials to send to which events. “It’s a poster child for tone deafness.” Miller said he could see only two explanations for not sending the president, vice president or even first lady Michelle Obama to Paris: either that there was a deep terror threat, or that Obama might be secretly planning a larger event with NATO allies — bigger than the visit that British Prime Minister David Cameron (who was in Paris Sunday) will be making to the White House at the end of the week. But there’s no sign of such an event being organized, and Miller said there’s no reason to believe one is coming. (Also on POLITICO: Bill Maher doubles down on Islam in wake of Paris attacks) But Miller said he couldn’t see a reason to skip the rally even if there is a bigger leader event in the planning, and the idea of a security threat didn’t make sense either: After all, the security in the area met the standards of so many other leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, combined. It’s unclear what role security concerns might have played in the decision to have no senior American officials take part in the Paris march. As a general rule, the Secret Service doesn’t let either Obama or Biden be in the open air in areas that haven’t had a full security sweep, and the White House tends to be mindful of having security precautions create distractions around events. But a forceful president could dismiss such concerns to make a public point about terrorism. “You want to counter that, and you want to show up,” Miller said. “It’s very much about symbolism. And France and the United States, for a longer period of time, embody the very propositions that are under attack.” There was “an Administration presence at the rally,” a White House aide insisted Sunday afternoon in a background statement sent to a number of news outlets by way of explanation: “Ambassador Hartley is there.” (Also on POLITICO: Obama tells France: The U.S. stands with you) That’s Jane Hartley, the former Obama bundler whom he sent to France last year, and whom even most insiders in Washington and Paris couldn’t pick out of a crowd. She tweeted photos of her view of the crowd, which she wrote was “Très émouvant.” (Very moving.) Her boss, Secretary of State John Kerry, kept up his previously planned schedule in India, meeting with the new prime minister and visiting the Gandhi Museum, though, he noted on a stop in Gujarat, “even as I stand here at this moment, a great march is taking place in Paris, where leaders have come from around the world in order to stand up against extremism.” Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted — in French. “En solidarité avec #ParisMarch, la France, les Français et tous ceux qui dénoncent la haine,” he wrote Sunday morning. “In solidarity with #ParisMarch, France, the French and all those who denounce hate.” The White House aide pointed out that Attorney General Eric Holder and deputy Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas were also in Paris on Sunday for “substantive meetings.” Neither joined the march. A Justice Department official said Holder met with French President François Hollande and the French interior minister, and then “he had to depart.” But the White House did announce early Sunday morning that it will host a “Summit on Countering Violent Extremism.” A month from now. After postponing it last October. It will feature panel discussions. (Also on POLITICO: Obama visits French embassy, offers condolences) The event, said White House press secretary Josh Earnest in an accompanying emailed statement, will “highlight domestic and international efforts to prevent violent extremists and their supporters from radicalizing, recruiting, or inspiring individuals or groups in the United States and abroad to commit acts of violence, efforts made even more imperative in light of recent, tragic attacks in Ottawa, Sydney, and Paris.” In other words, the White House is being careful not to suggest the attacks in Paris had anything to do with its decision to suddenly announce an event that’s been shrouded in mystery for months, that it put out word via an email early Sunday morning just because that’s when it happened to be ready to do it, not motivated by the events of the past week. As far as the dealings with the French, the White House aide said, there was also Obama’s phone call to Hollande on Wednesday and his visit to the French Embassy to sign a condolence book the next afternoon. “Beyond these public signals,” the aide said, “I can assure you all relevant components of the United States government have been working on supporting the French capabilities right now — information sharing, etc. Officials at the White House and across the agencies (State, Justice, CIA, DHS) have all been in touch with their French counterparts on essentially a minute-by-minute basis to support their efforts.” Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.


Authors:


Edward-Isaac Dovere
 isaac@politico.com
 @IsaacDovere






This story tagged under:

Barack ObamaFranceCharlie HebdoJoe BidenWhite HouseFrancois HollandeForeign PolicyVictoria NulandState DepartmentTerrorism





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