OPINION:
President Donald Trump received big-time cheers during delivery of remarks at the Boy Scouts of America’s National Jamboree.
Barack Obama, however? Not so much.
“By the way, just a question,” Trump said to the crowd, The Hill reported. “Did President Obama ever come to a jamboree?”
Let the boos begin — and they did.
“The answer is no,” Trump said. And he’s quite right.
Night and day, ying and yang. The Boy Scouts know their friends. Obama made a videotape that played at the National Jamboree in 2010. But after that, he largely ignored the group — except when he could politicize it.
In a pre-Super Bowl interview in 2013, Obama went out of his way to pat the Boy Scouts of America chiefs on the back for their then-proposed opening of doors for gays to serve in leadership roles.
“My attitude, ” Obama said then to Scott Pelley of CBS News, “is that gays and lesbians should have access and opportunity the same way everybody else does, in every institution and walk of life. The Scouts are a great institution that are promoting young people and exposing them to opportunities and leadership that will serve people for the rest of their lives. And I think nobody should be barred from that.”
What’s significant about Obama’s failures to appear at the annual jamborees is that the president of the United States is the honorary head of the BSA. And the BSA has always prided itself on its nonpartisanship — its simple mission of instilling values, purpose and character into the lives of the boys it serves.
But Obama, who spent part of his childhood with the Indonesian Scout Association, not BSA, could never quite make the jamborees.
Trump did. And he told the crowd “we’ll be back” for the next jamboree as well. What a difference in administrations. Obama sees gay rights; Trump, the faces of America’s future. Such a small thing. But such a loud and large message.
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