Politics

Obama packs his public schedule amid scandals

Neil Munro White House Correspondent
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Washington is gripped by scandal, Congress is grappling with a mammoth immigration bill, Democrats are griping and President Barack Obama is groping for a fix.

So he is leaving town Friday to visit an elementary school, a mud-dredging company and a community center in Baltimore, Md.

Two days after the Baltimore trip, he will fly to Atlanta, Ga., to give a May 19 commencement address to a friendly audience at Morehouse College.

These trips will help offset the proliferating images of scandal and incompetence that are broadcast by the near-simultaneous detonation of the Internal Revenue Service, Benghazi and media-wiretaps scandals.

Because of Obama’s public trips, TV and media reporters will be pushed to show Obama reaching out to ordinary Americans while doing the work that voters expect him to accomplish.

At the Wednesday press briefing, White House spokesman Jay Carney also announced the president would support a new bill to protect media from government investigations, and would meet May 15 with Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain — his GOP rival in 2008 — to talk about the pending immigration bill.

Last month, Obama declared the bill would be a “historic accomplishment.” McCain has strongly supported the far-reaching bill, which would bump up immigration to 30 million over 10 years.

McCain and his ally, Democratic New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, another co-author of the bill, has repeatedly said Obama has contributed to the immigration bill by playing a low profile. The May 15 meeting with McCain may break that pattern, and by associating Obama with the bill, may deter GOP support for the controversial bill.

Carney also announced that Obama would attend a conference on “mental health” in June with Vice President Joe Biden. The event, which is portrayed as part of Obama’s campaign to reduce “gun violence,” will help “launch a national conservation to increase national awareness about mental health,” said Carney.

The various economic, gun and immigration events are “the foundation of what he believes he is here to do,” Carney said Wednesday. “These are the things Americans expect their leaders to focus on,” he said, echoing Obama’s continued efforts to downplay the Benghazi, IRS and media-snooping crises.

The Morehouse address is one of three commencement speeches he’s slated to give this year. The first was at Ohio State University on May 5, when he told an enthusiastic crowd that “voices [in D.C. are] doing their best to gum up the works … [they] warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner.”

The Baltimore trip is one of several he’s planning for his “Middle Class Jobs and Opportunity Tour.” In late, April, he flew down to Texas for the first tip on the tour.

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