The President’s Speech

Barack Obama is the foremost orator in my life time. During the Presidential campaign, I thought that this may be the case. The first two years of his Presidency raised some doubts. I knew the talent was there, but would the talent be used effectively to enable him to be the great President that I thought he could and hoped he would be? But after his speech at the Memorial Service for the Victims of the Shooting in Tucson, Arizona, I have no doubt. No other public figure could have accomplished what I think President Obama accomplished last night.

He spoke as the head of state, not as a partisan candidate or leader, and a deeply divided country became, at least momentarily, united in response to his beautifully crafted and delivered address. He enabled us to grieve together, helped us try to make sense together, and challenged us to respectfully act together, despite our differences.

The power of the speech was revealed by the reaction to it. Even Glenn Beck recognized Obama’s accomplishment, and publicly thanked the President for giving the best speech of his career.   And the instant analysis of the panel at Fox News praised the excellence and effectiveness of the President’s inspirational address.   Charles Krauthammer concluded the discussion, recognizing that the President appeared and spoke as the head of state, not as an ideological politician, and maintained that it may have a significant effect on Obama’s fortunes. “I am not sure it’s going to have a trivial effect on the way he is perceived.” This from one of Obama’s major critics.

Of course Obama’s supporters, including most of the people attending the service in Tucson at the vast McKale Memorial Center at the University of Arizona, were deeply moved. My friends and I at the Theodore Young Community Center were especially pleased that our guy did so well.

And the commentators of the major newspapers and blogs were almost universally in agreement of the speeches inventiveness and excellence. Dionne, Robinson, Thiessen , Gerson at the Washington Post , Collins and the Times editorial voice at The New York Times , John Dickerson at Slate , John Guardiano at FrumForum, and, in a most interesting acknowledgement of the rarity of Obama’s achievement, Rick Brookhiser at the National Review.

Obama is probably the only major politician who became a national figure because of one speech, his 2004 keynote address to the Democratic National Convention.

When his campaign for the Presidency was most severely challenged by the politics of race surrounding his relationship with his minister Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr., he gave the most important speech on the problem of race given by a candidate for the Presidency, as I analyzed in a previous post.

Now he has given a remarkable speech that marked a solemn occasion, by remembering with specificity those who died, those who survived and those who acted heroically. And then he addressed the political divisions in the country, most recently concerning whether the heated hateful rhetoric (much of it directed at the policies and person of Obama) has contributed to the tragedy . He did this in a way that made his most principled point for civility, uniting his divided audience:

“But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized -– at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who happen to think differently than we do -– it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds. (Applause.)…

For the truth is none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack. None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped these shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man’s mind. Yes, we have to examine all the facts behind this tragedy. We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence. We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of such violence in the future. (Applause.) But what we cannot do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on each other. (Applause.) That we cannot do. (Applause.) That we cannot do.”(link)

In the days immediately following the Tucson Massacre, the divide was between those who argued that the violence of political rhetoric, specifically of the right, was somehow related to the Tucson massacre, and those who argued that this was unfounded and divisive at best, a blood libel, as Sarah Palin unfortunately put it.  The response to a national tragedy was an even more divided nation. Obama turned the table.

He agreed with Palin, et.al., that we will likely never know what motivated Jared Lee Loughner and that the nature of our political discourse was not likely an immediate cause, but he disagreed with the Palin (who repeatedly reminded her audience during the Presidential campaign that Barack Hussein Obama palled around with terrorists) about what the proper nature of political discourse should be. He struck a blow in favor of civility.  His speech  makes incivility more than unpleasant.  It is less likely now to yield practical results. He marked a standard for future action that all Americans applauded, and this will have consequences. I agree with Charles Krauthammer: it’s not going to have a trivial effect.

Now it will be interesting to see how the Republicans advance the ‘‘Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.’’ Perhaps they will have the decency to at least change the name of this meaningless gesture.