Obama and the Rangel Saga
The video below is of President Obama’s interview with Harry Smith where he states the following about Charlie Rangel and the ethics controversy that surrounds him:
He’s somebody who’s at the end of his career. I’m sure that what he wants is to be able to end his career with dignity. And my hope is that it happens
Watch the video here
My first thought when I saw all of this was that the President’s words were simply twisted to make it sound like he wanted Rangel out. After reading more commentary on it and listening to the entire interview (I wasn’t able to find an online version) it does sound like Obama is embarrassed by this and wants Rangel to resign.
In my opinion, this was the wrong course of action for the President. Rangel has a very large support base and rightly so, he’s a Korean War veteran and has served in the House for 39 years. In preparing for the interview, I would think that the President would have said, “we need to handle this tactfully and respectfully”. Instead, we received a poorly worded rebuke of Rangel that essentially outlines his resignation.
The philosophical high ground would have been the following,
We take ethics violations very seriously and we know that Congressman Rangel will be held accountable and we will back whatever the trial decision is.
As I was about to hit the “Publish” button when I came across this article that points out the Obama administration making similar comments to my suggestion above.
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