The Mourner in Chief

With Barack Obama, what you see isn't always what you get.

That's the thought that went through my mind as the president neared the end of his speech at tonight's memorial service for the victims of the Arizona shooting on Saturday.

His performance reinforced the impression I have long had of him. This guy knows how to give a speech. Sometimes I think that's the kind of thing someone is born with. You can't teach it.

You can trust me on that, by the way. I took public speaking courses when I was younger, but, despite my best efforts, I don't think public speaking was ever my calling.

That wasn't my instructor's fault. I think there is only so much a public speaking instructor can do, anyway, no matter how gifted that person might be. It's like hiring Stan Musial, with his unorthodox swing, to coach hitting.

When he was on the campaign trail, Obama excelled at soaring rhetoric. It was what drew so many people to his side in the first place. It is what keeps so many in his corner today.

But many who voted for Obama with the expectation of seeing an aggressive, decisive leader in the White House have been disappointed by the tentative, at times timid approach Obama has taken to governing.

Perhaps it takes this kind of event to restore that Obama charisma, and it seems to have done that, at least temporarily. His speech tonight at the memorial service was a reminder of the kind of oratory of which this president is capable.

In an odd sort of disconnect, his presidential addresses have been low on inspiration and high on lecturing and scolding, but that wasn't appropriate to this occasion.

This is the kind of thing presidents are expected to do — and to do well.

It is what is being called the role of "mourner–in–chief." It is when circumstances force a president to comfort a bereaved nation. He cannot scold. He cannot lecture.

It is not a pleasant task. It wasn't pleasant for Bill Clinton when he had to travel to Oklahoma City in 1995. Nor was it pleasant for Ronald Reagan 25 years ago when he spoke to the nation on television following the Challenger disaster.

But it is a task that occasionally must be performed. Presidents who fall short of the mark — or, worse, do not make the attempt at all — usually do not remain president for long. On the other hand, presidents who are perceived to do well on this stage do tend to be re–elected.

Both Clinton and Reagan were re–elected, of course. Clinton's speech at Oklahoma City may have helped. Reagan's clearly did not since it came after he had already won a second term (although that could be said to have reinforced a generally positive national image of Reagan that originated when he was shot and grew as a result of the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut).

Both speeches were so well done that AmericanRhetoric.com lists them among the top 100 speeches of the 20th century.

(Some people mention George W. Bush's speech to the nation after 9–11. But, in addition to the fact that it more properly belongs in the still nascent 21st century, my memory is that his performance the night of the attacks was less than inspiring. His speech before a joint session of Congress a week later, however, was better.)

In that respect, Barack Obama's trip to Arizona today was really his opportunity to show people he could empathize with them, "feel their pain," as President Clinton used to say.

And there is plenty of pain in southeast Arizona — as well as the rest of the nation. There is the physical and emotional pain brought on by the shootings themselves. And there is the less–easily defined pain of the divisiveness that many say was behind the shootings, even though I still have yet to see a direct link.

I'll grant you that Sarah Palin's choice of words in her efforts to deflect criticism was, to say the least, poor. "Blood libel" is as offensive to Jews as "crusade" — the term Dubya used in the aftermath of 9–11 — was to Muslims.

But right now, that only means she was guilty of poor judgment — she's been a frequent offender, and it has inspired a lot of anger against her.

There is certainly a lot of anger in American politics today, a lot of finger pointing. Conservatives feel they have been unfairly (pardon the pun) targeted. It is a self–defense mechanism, I think. They are correct when they point out that, from everything we know about the attacker, he could hardly be said to be a political conservative.

(In fact, I stand by what I wrote Monday, when I said the attacker appeared to be apolitical.)

And liberals believe the attack was the inevitable result of the venomous atmosphere in which we live. You can try to tell them that they're jumping to a fallacious conclusion by blaming Palin, which they are, and they will only counter with the argument that she has contributed more than anyone else to the venomous level of the political dialogue.

And that is hard to argue with as well.

It hasn't always been this way. In fact, it hasn't always been this way in my lifetime. When I was growing up, Republicans and Democrats could disagree without the other side questioning either their motivations or their ancestry. Everything wasn't sharply divided along party lines, and each side did not spend all its time, once it gained a majority, trying to undo what the other party had done while it held the majority.

It was possible in those days for people to vote against their party on issues and not be denigrated as a Democrat or Republican "in name only."

As long as both parties insist on playing that game, in which the #1 item on each side's agenda is to dismantle whatever the other side has done, nothing will be accomplished — at least not permanently.

That, in my mind, was the great challenge facing Obama when he came to Arizona today. He had to try to bring those two sides as close together as possible — and, to be fair, there wasn't much that anyone could do in a single speech.

But a president is a leader. He is not one of 100 senators or one of more than 400 representatives. His constituency is all 50 states, even the ones that voted against him, and more than 300 million citizens, and he must help their elected officials find common ground. He must set the tone, and there were hopes, even from those of us who did not vote for Obama two years ago, that his gift for oratory might begin the process of bringing the two sides closer together.

Do you think he succeeded?