At the Rutgers graduation President Obama got in some digs at Donald Trump without mentioning him by name; but he seemed more concerned with promoting himself than promoting Hillary Clinton
PISCATAWAY - You have to hand it to the president: He knows how to get in his shots.
The shots in question were against a guy Barack Obama never mentioned by name during a 45-minute commencement speech to the Rutgers Class of 2016. That's Donald Trump.
Trump is of course the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party in the race for the job Obama will hold for just seven more months. And there was little doubt the Donald was the target for the brunt of the 45-minute address.
But like the pro he is, Obama started off with a light touch.
"I come here for a simple reason," he said at the start. "To finally settle this pork roll vs. Taylor Ham question."
After getting a laugh, he demurred, saying, " I know better than to get in the middle of that debate."
He went on to joke about the legendary grease trucks.
"Mozzarella sticks and chicken fingers on your cheesesteaks," he said. " I'm sure Michelle would approve."
Obama also showed an impressive grasp of the local geography as he sympathized with the students over the shuttles buses running between the distant Livingston and Cook campuses.
That led him sideways into his attack on Trump. After mentioning the diversity of the student body taking those buses, he praised Rutgers as "What might just be America's most diverse student body."
That permitted him to segue into the serious part of his speech, a five-point embrace of the idea of progressivism.
He began the first point by advising the graduates "When you hear someone longing for good old days, take it with a grain of salt."
"People long for some imaginary past when the economy hummed and all politicians were wise," he said. "Guess what? It ain't so. The good old days weren't all that good. Life is better than is was 50 or 30 or even or even eight years ago."
Eight years ago was, of course, the final year of the Bush presidency. But Obama didn't mention the last Republican president either. Instead he turned the attack on the guy who wants to be the next Republican president.
He urged the graduates "to not fear the future" and to engage with the world.
"A wall won't help that," he said. "The point is, to help ourselves, we've got to help others - not pull up the drawbridge and try to keep the world out."
And he got in a further dig at the Donald's call for restricting Muslim immigration.
"That's a betrayal of who we are," he said. "It would alienate the very communities who are our most important partners in the war against violent extremism."
Just in case there was some uninformed soul out there who didn't get the reference to a certain businessman, Obama went on to talk about the need for public officials to have political experience.
"If we go to the doctor we want to know he went to medical school. If we fly, we want somebody who can pilot the plane," he said. "But in our public lives we suddenly think, 'I don't want somebody who's done it before?'"
Who could that somebody who's done it before be? Hmm, it sure sounds a lot like Hillary Clinton.
But commencement speeches are not the proper venue for open politicking. And
in fact his comments on the use of the military could have been seen more as a shot at Clinton than at Trump.
Recent reporting by the New York Times makes it clear that Clinton who was the pivotal voice advising Obama to begin what became a disastrous intervention in Libya. She has also urged Obama to take a more interventionist role in Syria.
So when Obama said, "Engagement does not mean just employing the military," I found myself asking just who was pushing for all that engagement in Obama's first term. Certainly not the Donald.
And for all the digs he got in at Trump, Obama seemed less concerned with advancing Hillary's career than framing his own in the light of history.
Early in the speech he quoted Martin Luther King 's saying that "The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. "
After painting himself as a progressive, the president summed it up by urging the graduates to follow in his footsteps.
"Is it any wonder that I'm optimistic?" he asked. "A generation of Americans has bent the arc of history."
From the continuing applause he got for 45 minutes, Obama sure sounded like he had convinced the audience about the long-term arc of history.
As for the short term, we'll have to wait till November to find that out.