U.S. President Barack Obama, as is well known at this point, elected not to attend the mass rally in Paris on Sunday, where the victims of several incidents of mass murder by radical Islamic terrorists were honored, and the principle of free speech (and a free press) was defended. The president also did not send Vice President Joe Biden to the event, a symbolic role that would have suited Biden, while he waits for Hillary Clinton to announce her candidacy for the Democratic Party nomination for president in 2016, thereby ending his political career and ambitions. Secretary of State John Kerry was in India, and chose to stay there. Attorney General Eric Holder was already in Paris, but apparently had more important things to do there than show his face in public. The excuse for his failure to show up at the rally had to do with attending meetings in the city. It is pretty likely that those with whom he was meeting were not sitting around a table conferring while the rally took place.
Of course, this was not Ferguson, Missouri. There the White House sent three people to Michael Brown’s funeral, and had a lot more to say about his death than it did about the murder of 17 innocents which occurred in Paris. The U.S. ambassador to France, a political appointee, who was awarded this elite post for her service as a big Obama campaign bundler, was the sole official U.S. representative at the rally which several million people attended, including over 40 foreign leaders. Some are calling this embarrassing ”no show” by the president and his top team, Obama’s Katrina moment, a reference to President George W. Bush flying over New Orleans after the hurricane hit, while praising the efforts of his Federal Emergency Management Agency director.