WASHINGTON — Baltimore isn’t the District of Columbia.
WASHINGTON — Baltimore isn’t the District of Columbia.
This isn’t news to you, gentle reader. But it may be your initial response when I tell you that Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is my choice for the winner of the worst week in Washington.
How can that be, you ask? Well, because rules are made to be broken. Because Baltimore is close enough to D.C. And mostly because Rawlings-Blake’s horrendous handling of the riots that broke out in the wake of Monday’s memorial service for Freddie Gray more than makes up for the 40 miles that separate the two cities.
It would take a column far longer than this one to dissect all the mistakes Rawlings-Blake made as anger over Gray’s death, apparently from an injury he sustained while in police custody, roiled Charm City. But here are the biggies.
First, she waited until 8 p.m.Monday, after police in riot gear had already clashed with teenagers in West Baltimore, before making a public statement. The first rule for any politician when your city is in crisis is “be present.” It’s impossible to be too high-profile in those moments.
Second, at the news conference Rawlings-Blake finally held, she referred to the rioters as “thugs.” By Wednesday, she was apologizing for that word choice. “I wanted to clarify my comments on ‘thugs,’” she tweeted. “When you speak out of frustration and anger, one can say things in a way that you don’t mean.”
Yes, one can. For a supposed rising star in national Democratic politics, Rawlings-Blake seemed to wilt when her city needed her most.
Cillizza covers the White House for The Washington Post and writes The Fix, its politics blog.