Author: K.T. McFarland
Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was laid to rest (Wednesday) in Great Britain. The “Iron Lady” died last week at age 87.
Some commentators have expressed surprise that President Obama did not send a high-level official delegation to her funeral. I’m way beyond surprised. I’m ashamed….and angry.
After all, it is standard operating procedure for the Vice President or First Lady or, at a minimum the Secretary of State, to attend funerals of foreign leaders, even those from lesser nations.
Shame on you, Mr. President. You and your administration look cheap, small and petty.
It goes without saying that when one of the longest serving leaders of America’s closet and most enduring ally dies, the United States should send a large and distinguished delegation of America’s leaders, past and present.
Not this time.
The White House offered a lame excuse — all the senior Obama administration officials are way too busy to take 24 hours out of their hectic schedules to pay respects to the woman who helped win the Cold War, turn around the British economy, and shatter the glass ceiling of the English-speaking world.
Vice President Biden, for example, was presiding over a series of votes on gun control in the Senate, late Wednesday afternoon. Okay, understood. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that no senior administration official could spare the time or make the effort to head ‘across the pond’ for a few hours.
One suspects something else is at play besides busy government executives struggling to get through their long work days, staggering under the weight of their official responsibilities.
Could it be that Margaret Thatcher was a Tory? That she battled British Trade Unionists and won? That she worked hand-in-hand with Ronald Reagan, the incarnation of evil for many left-wing Democrats?
It used to be American politics stopped at the water’s edge, and that American President’s honored foreign leaders, regardless of their political persuasions or party.
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