The Patriot Post® · Obama's Flint Visit Reeks of Political Expediency

Barack Obama landed today in Flint, Michigan, ostensibly to glean a firsthand account of what the beleaguered city’s residents are contending with and to discuss the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. But, as is typically the case, Obama’s visit smells of yet another baleful attempt to score political points.

“Obama has visited the locations of natural disasters, terrorist attacks and mass shootings in the United States,” writes The Washington Post. “In 2010, he visited the Gulf Coast in the wake of the massive BP oil spill. But he has carefully refrained from making a personal visit to a city dealing with a local or statewide public management crisis and weighing in while there.”

The Post continues, “When Obama addressed the Illinois state legislature in February to tout bipartisanship, he did not mention a months-long state budget standoff that threatened to cut off crucial services. Aides said the president will use his time in Flint to highlight the need for greater federal and local investment to repair and replace the nation’s aging infrastructure. Obama has routinely called on Republicans to support more funding for public-works programs, and he made it a campaign issue in 2012.”

In other words, Obama — never one to let a crisis go to waste — is capitalizing on an opportunity to reiterate a popular talking point and feebly expose the people supposedly impeding progress. To be clear, the nation’s infrastructure is in bad shape, and the fix isn’t cheap. The conservative estimate to recondition the country’s piping infrastructure is a whopping $356 billion over 20 plus years. But Democrats refuse to pay for it by offsetting other unnecessary expenditures. It says a lot about Obama that he visits only the places in which he sees a chance to exploit voters’ gullibility.