It was an ironic visual image that did not go unnoticed by many television viewers — President Barack Obama trying to soothe tension in the wake of the Ferguson grand jury's decision on one side of a screen, while the city streets exploded in anger and protest on the other.
As Obama pleaded for calm, Ferguson turned out of control — a visual broadcast by CNN that may endure long past his difficult White House tenure, noted James Oliphant, writing about the moment's visual heft in the
National Journal.
"Even as the president spoke, it felt as if the situation on the ground in Ferguson was beginning to spiral," Oliphant, the Journal's White House correspondent, noted of the president's late-evening speech Monday in the White House briefing room. "And viewers could be forgiven for becoming transfixed by the pictures and tuning out Obama's calls for calm."
As Obama defended law enforcement and urged citizens not to turn destructive after a grand jury declined to indict a white police officer in the shooting death of an unarmed black teen, he failed to gain much traction in his message of unity and peace, the Journal reported.
"It was a perfect example of Obama's on-one-hand-and-on-the-other style, but it also showed his limits, both the ones imposed by his office and the ones he's imposed on himself," Oliphant wrote of the moment's larger meaning. "Possibly, when the smoke clears Tuesday, his words will gain new resonance."
The president's remarks came in perhaps futility as protests broke out across the nation,
CNN noted. "We are a nation built on the rule of law, and so we need to accept that this decision was the grand jury's to make," he said. "There are Americans who agree with it and there are Americans who are deeply disappointed, even angry. It's an understandable reaction. But I join Michael's parents in asking anyone who protests this decision to do so peacefully."
The president did not rule out making his own trip to Ferguson to soothe tensions,
according to USA Today. "Let's take a look and see how things are going," the president responded when asked about a visit by a reporter Monday.
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