Media pundits are often concerned about the optics of political situations. They believe that the president must always respond to emergencies in a way that will endear him to the electorate. For example, Barack Obama personally visiting the New Jersey shores after Hurricane Sandy seemed to assure residents of the national concern for their loss. But sometimes negative optics can also be effective.
Political commentators will even debate about whether a personal visit by the president is necessary or whether it is enough for him to send a surrogate. There is still some argument as to whether or not it was enough, for the sake of optics, to send Attorney General Eric Holder to Ferguson, Mo., to resolve the protests over the police shooting.
Now another dispute is brewing over Obama’s decision to play golf after extending his regrets to the family of James Foley, the American war correspondent who was brutally beheaded by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Some in the press insist that it was insensitive for Obama to go to the golf course as Foley’s family grieved.
This is a case where the press really have it wrong. This is no time for the president to appear to such a depraved and violent enemy that his determination to retaliate is at all weakened by their merciless conduct. In this case the president’s optics should intimidate the enemy and encourage the electorate that military reprisal is assured.
Obama’s message is that the ISIS brutality did not even cause the leader of the free world to alter his golf schedule. Certainly ISIS gets the point.
