The weekend before President Obama’s planned farewell address was a good one by Chicago’s violent standards — only one person was killed by gunfire and eight others were wounded.
As Mr. Obama returns home Tuesday to deliver his final speech as president, Chicago is in the grips of a soaring homicide rate and reeling from a horrific black-on-white torture hate crime that was captured on video. Over Christmas weekend, 12 Chicagoans were killed in a total of 27 shootings.
Amid criticism that the president and his former chief of staff, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, have failed for eight years to address the city’s violence and racial divisions, Mr. Obamanevertheless will bask in the adoration of thousands of friends and supporters in a prime-time speech reviewing his presidency and offering his prescriptions for the challenges ahead.
Some Chicago residents say it’s shaping up as a hollow valedictory speech.
“He didn’t need to come to Chicago for the speech, and he knows that doing so calls attention not only to the city’s troubles but to his administration’s failures to solve them,” said Charles Lipson, a political science professor at the University of Chicago. “Chicago’s troubles highlight the deep national divisions, social breakdown, income inequality and gun violence that Barack Obama was elected to ameliorate. His administration not only failed, most of the problems grew worse.”
He said the question of who is responsible for those failures “will be the debate about his presidency.”
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