Absence of Empathy

The day after last week's shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, the Boston Globe pondered, in an editorial, Americans' expectation that their president "capture the mood and moment" of tragic events "with the right blend of emotion, empathy and urgency."

The Globe conceded that this is a "delicate act of timing and tone." Not every president has been able to manage it. In fact, George W. Bush was criticized by many for his somewhat flat speech to the nation on the evening of Sept. 11, 2001, although he made up for it with a stronger effort in his speech to Congress a week later.

But the presidents who have succeeded — in recent times, one thinks of Ronald Reagan and the attack on the Marines' barracks in Beirut (and, later, the Challenger disaster) and Bill Clinton and the Oklahoma City bombing — have been rewarded for, to borrow Clinton's phrase, feeling Americans' shared pain.

Barack Obama, the Globe wrote, "despite his eloquence and dignity, has yet to master" this role. The newspaper admitted that, in his initial remarks following the shootings, Obama eventually made statements that were "respectful and appropriate.

"But it took him too long to get to the point of delivering them," the editorial complained.

Bloggers on different points of the political spectrum have been quick to take the baton from the Globe and run with it.

Here is a sample.

"The tragedy at Ft. Hood was a moment and a chance for a president, about whom the armed forces aren't yet sure, to step up and assume one of the most important roles he has — that of commander in chief," wrote Bruce McQuain for the QandO blog. "And, frankly, he blew it. Even the liberal Boston Globe understood he'd blown it."

The complaints remind me of how I felt back on Labor Day.

I felt certain that Obama would use the occasion of Labor Day to speak to the nation about the unemployment situation. Remember Labor Day? It was just a couple of months ago, but, in many ways, it seems so much longer.

The Labor Department had just announced a few days earlier that unemployment had risen to 9.7%, its highest level in 26 years. It was the ideal time, I thought, for him to reassure the unemployed that he felt their pain and that he was focusing like a laser on finding an answer.

But, instead, he embarked on a campaign trip to drum up support for health care reform. And his lieutenants were busy putting out fires that had been started by his announced intention to speak to the schoolchildren of America the next day. If he said anything about unemployment that day, I never heard about it.

"What happened?" an unemployed friend of mine asked me in an e–mail that evening. "Why didn't he talk about unemployment?"

My friend didn't have to say who "he" was. We both knew because we had discussed this very subject by e–mail earlier in the day. I had to admit that I didn't know why he didn't speak about unemployment on what was the most appropriate day to do so.

Things have gotten worse since then. Last week, the Labor Department reported that unemployment was over 10% for the first time since April 1983. And today I read that an unemployed fellow blogger whose marriage is breaking up is leaving his soon–to–be ex–wife and their daughters in Massachusetts to live with family members in Florida or Missouri.

He has written about his struggles before, and his friends in the blogosphere have been hoping things would turn around for him.

"When a gunman fired those shots at Fort Hood, the country immediately felt the pain," the Globe wrote last week. "Obama missed the first moment to show he understood just how much it hurt."

The unemployed have been in pain for a long time, and most, if not all, would like some reassurance from their president.

My guess is most could have told the soldiers in Fort Hood not to expect much empathy from this White House.