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A half-hearted defense of the L.A. Mayor: Let's Call It a Criticism.

Writer's picture: Chuck RaddaChuck Radda

It is a sad truth that most public figures will be remembered for their worst gaffe, their worst speech, and their worst trip out of the country when their city was burning...or, in Ted Cruz's case in 2021, his state was freezing.


I speak, of course, of Karen Bass, mayor of Los Angeles, who was in Ghana when the raging California fires blew up last Tuesday. She wasn't necessarily on vacation, but neither was she officially transacting Los Angeles business in Africa. She has thus become California's new pariah, drawing the forever-incorrect reference to Nero. (He died ten centuries before the fiddle was invented.) In the end, Cruz's escape never hurt him politically—Bass's future remains unknown. Cruz returned home to a cold and dark Texas; Bass returned home to ashes.


Still, her absence is more complicated than Cruz's and less a blatant attempt to escape, for Ms. Bass had served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2011 to 2022 and on the Committee of Foreign Affairs, where she was chair of the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights. As such, she traveled to Africa frequently, but that excuse must be tempered by her having traveled everywhere frequently. (Maybe you saw her at the closing ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics.) When she became mayor, she promised to curtail that wanderlust.  


Then, last week, she traveled to Ghana.


We should note that most of her past travels aroused little more than the usual partisan nit-picking (Bass is a Democrat) and that many of her trips benefited the United States or the city she ran. When she received word of the fires, she immediately left Ghana, flew home to L.A., and assumed her responsibilities.


But while we're noting things, let's also note that before the first erupted, a Weather Channel meteorologist warned that unusually high Santa Ana winds would have an impact on L.A. for days to come and advised that winds could reach 100 m.p.h., the result of a typical weather phenomenon intensified by drought and climate change. We in Connecticut experienced a minor sampling last week on those unusually windy days. It's erroneous to claim the winds in California were twice as strong because the math isn't that simple, but imagine our gusts from last week buffeting those fires we experienced during that autumn drought. Imagine the rapidity with which they would have spread and the near-impossibility of controlling or extinguishing them. If Weather Channel viewers were aware of the danger the day before, emergency workers would have been aware even earlier than that—early enough for all involved to remain close by.


Admittedly, Mayor Bass would not have been able to extinguish the fires any faster or fly any water-drop missions. All she could really do was be there, but that's a basic requirement in civic leadership: Remember Bill Clinton in Oklahoma City, George W. Bush at the World Trade Center, Barack Obama at Sandy Hook, and Ronald Reagan after the Challenger disaster. These become defining moments, even when the tragedy cannot be undone or mitigated.


It is sad—maybe even unfair—that a person whose résumé comprises a lifetime of public service—of personal, professional, and diplomatic accomplishments—will have that biography footnoted by a single lapse in judgment or awareness. We do remain a forgiving race—that ability keeps us from becoming some angry Dickensian recluses living for revenge—but forgiveness takes time. And memories of the most recent gaffe, even amid a history of accomplishment, are hard to sponge away.

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