On the Funeral and the Empty Chair

The White House tried really -- OK, not very hard, to defend the decision by the president or his staff not to have him in attendance at the funeral for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia this past weekend.

There was no defense, zero.  No conflict with an existing critical, presidential occasion.  ISIS hadn't done anything requiring his immediate attention; no foreign heads of state were in town.  Baseball hasn't started, so there was no ceremonial first pitch required of him.  No one more important had passed away, demanding his attendance at their funeral instead.

And no assembly of Black Lives Matter thugs and their supporters had come to the White House demanding the time of the president.  Well, actually, they had, but it was earlier in the week, and Obama had already met with them and told whoever would listen (which, at this point, is no one) what wonderful young people they were.

So outside of the prospect of a pleasant round of golf, there was no competing demand for the president's time.  There was, however, a competing ideology.

Barack Obama was simply not going to show up and say a nice word about someone whose written decisions and dissenting opinions stood for seven years as a conscientious barrier to the unconstitutional theft of power that Obama had been practicing.  Obama viewed Justice Scalia not as the distinguished and principled jurist he was, but simply as someone whose death was less important, per se, than his disappearance from the Court.

This absence was entirely political, and will go down as a further mark on the "legacy" of this president that continues to dissolve, even as he does only what he thinks is needed to polish it.

First, let us note that no president in memory -- and thanks to Megyn Kelly of Fox for actually getting this researched -- has failed to attend the funeral of a Supreme Court Justice who passed away in office.  None.  So for a sitting president to stay away despite a well-published empty agenda for the day, well, that is a statement.  And not a good one.

Second, let us consider the alternative.  Barack Obama could have attended, stayed in the shadows, mumbled a few kind words about "lengthy service" -- even "worthy adversary" -- and spent most of his words expressing sympathy for the Scalia family.  He could have done that and completely defused any criticism.  We all would have essentially ignored his presence because he would have given no cause to comment on it.

That would have shown what is known in the civilized community as "class."  But not being there was a statement.  It said "I, Barack Obama, regard my political opponents not only as my enemies, but as already dead to me.  It is more important that I not show even a chink in the armor of my devout leftism, nor pay the slightest honor to those opponents, rather than showing even normal courtesy and sympathy to the family by showing up."

Aside: You wonder what goes through his mind when he has to pin a Congressional Medal of Honor on a brave serviceman.

We have an opportunity that the press will, presumably, not take.  It is a chance to ask Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders if they would have attended the funeral of Antonin Scalia had they been president and had an empty Day-Timer.  No waffling, just a straight-up yes or no answer.  Not why they think Obama didn't attend; the question is not about Obama.

"Would you, Mrs. Clinton, and you, Mr. Sanders, have attended the funeral of Justice Scalia, had you been president and an empty calendar on the Saturday of the funeral."  And if the answer is anything but "Yes, I would have been there", then the follow up would be two words: "Why not?"

Because if class and respect have gone out of their vocabulary and out of their way of going about their lives and if, knowing that, people would still vote for either of them, then we have bigger problems.

I'll tell you what -- if I had been president and it had been the funeral of a far-left justice like Ruth Ginsburg, I would have been there no matter what I thought of her.

How hard would that have been, really, Mr. Obama?

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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