President Obama is not just some political guy. He was elected president of this country. He is the boss of the Justice Department, which answers to him. Why should he not get to weigh in on a high profile decision, much like he might on any other high profile decision.
President Obama is not any sort of military expert, but he made the ultimate call on whether to go after OBL. He is not an economic expert, but he ultimately makes the final call on economic policy. And the same for any number of other areas. Ironically, law is actually the one area he is probably most qualified for, so why should he absolutely not weigh in here?
I could see this better if the target was some sort of political opponent of his, but that’s not the case here.
[Only thing I can think of is that the president getting involved in decisions about prosecuting individuals is just not commonly done, and once it’s not commonly done, this itself would create the appearance of political motivations. But the same could probably be said of the Attorney General as well.]
The Justice Department is part of the executive branch, although people generally don’t want the president to tell the Justice Department who to prosecute because he isn’t a prosecutor and has other things to do. The whole point of having the department is that the president is delegating responsibility. But the important point here is that whatever Obama does is wrong.
Because Obama does not want to be associated with this kind of racially motivated revenge prosecution. There’s no chance that they will find anything they can use against Zimmerman, and Obama knows it.
Besides, the only people who want to prosecute Zimmerman are the race pimps, and Obama already has their support.
Also besides, HOW DARE YOU CRITICIZE OBAMA! RACIST! RACIST!
I know he’s in charge of the prosecutors…I just read it the other way, I guess. I blame the birthers
Anyhoo…do you really think it’s a great idea to have the president bull in on individual cases that are only newsworthy because of media hijinks? It was blatantly obvious that there wasn’t going to be enough evidence to convict him of murder…they may have been able to sell manslaughter, but that wasn’t going to be good enough for the media circus, so they had to overreach.
As a practical matter, Obama doesn’t want to be involved because it’s a lose-lose situation for him. If he says to prosecute, he shares in the ridicule that will come when the case is unsuccessful. If he says not to prosecute, he pisses off a significant portion of his political base.
On the other hand, if he says to DoJ something like “Conduct a thorough investigation, and make an appropriate decision based on the facts, law, and applicable DOJ policy”, then he doesn’t get blamed either way.
The same would apply to any other department. But the president can get involved in big decisions at other departments, and certainly it’s not a point of emphasis when he decides to not get involved in a particular one.
I wouldn’t normally respond to this type of silliness, but I do want to clarify that my OP was not intended as a criticism of Obama. ISTM that this is assumed to be a “good thing” and Obama was just going along with that general principle.
It’s probably not PC to say this, but I think part of what got Obama elected is he played down the whole 'black thing". In his first campaign, had he spoke too much to that fact, white voters would have gotten that Al Sharpton/ Jesse Jackson vibe and he would not have got elected.
So with that in mind, I think Mr. Obama treads very cautiously when it comes to issues of race. Besides, we got a black AG, he’s got this. If there is a case to be had. Which I don’t think there is.
Yes, but only insofar as they exercise some sort of prosecutorial function, and hence prosecutorial discretion. It’s fine for the POTUS to tell the USCIS not to deport X category of unlawful immigrants (as he did.) It’s not good if he tells them not to deport a specific person. This is especially true since by and large the DOJ’s prosecutorial function is the only one involving criminal charges, rather than administrative sanctions.
I would say that reflects the nature of what the Justice Department does. We’re uncomfortable with the idea of the president ordering the prosecution of an individual because that feels undemocratic or like an abuse of power. I think people would probably feel the same way if he gave similar instructions to other departments targeting individual citizens - if he ordered that Zimmerman be deemed ineligible for a health care exchange, say - but it’s a little harder to picture how that would look in practice.
I don’t think we want our president to decide to charge or not to charge anyone. The Justice Department is supposed to be above politics and the Attorney General is the nation’s lawyer, not the president’s. I don’t recall any president directing Justice to bring charges against anyone. The only time I can recall a president commenting on a current case was Nixon saying that Manson was guilty, and that was a great controversy.
I think Presidents should stick to broad policies and such rather than getting mired in single cases like this. He’s already injected himself into this in the early days, and as said above, I think he doesn’t see any benefit to personally getting involved, whether the DoJ wins or loses. They win - it’s his Justice Department and AG. They lose - none of it sticks to him because of an ill-advised comment at this stage.
Obama should not be involved in this decision, because he made it personal, and made it about race. A hispanic President should not have gone on television and taken Zimmerman’s side with the comment that they could have been brothers, and Obama should not have gone on television and taken Martin’s side with the comment that if he had a son he’d look like him.
