President Barack Obama walked a rhetorical tightrope in Tucson Wednesday night, delivering a speech billed as apolitical that nonetheless carried a powerful political message.
Obama sought to transcend the caustic debate sparked by Saturday’s massacre – and the jarringly campaign-like atmosphere of the University of Arizona’s McKale Center – and seemed to succeed, delivering one of the most passionate, if hard-to-define speeches of his presidency.
On the surface, it was an attempt to honor six people murdered by an emotionally-disturbed gunman who had targeted Rep. Gabrielle Giffords – and to sanctify their participation in the democratic process.
Despite the disclaimers of his aides, Obama’s speech was undeniably political, encapsulating his conciliatory vision of presidential leadership with a call to “make sense out of that which seems senseless” by elevating political discourse.
“When a tragedy like this strikes, it is part of our nature to demand explanations – to try to impose some order on the chaos,” he told the 12,000 people in the arena and a crowd nearly as big who watched on TV monitors in overflow areas outside.
“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 think differently than we do – it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”
Not everyone was impressed. Columnist Michael Gerson, who wrote some of President George W. Bush’s most eloquent speeches, said on CNN that he found this speech to be preachy, overly long and given in an atmosphere that seemed more like a pep rally.
For the past two years, that call has fallen on deaf ears, with Republicans blaming Obama for ramming through his agenda without heed to their concerns.
But on Wednesday, Obama found powerful new expression for his plea in the tragic story of Christina Taylor Green, the nine-year-old girl who was gunned down while meeting her congresswoman at the local Safeway.
“I want us to live up to her expectations,” the typically stoic Obama said, choking up. “I want her democracy to be as good as she imagined it. All of us – we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations.
“If there are rain puddles in heaven, Christina is jumping in them today,” Obama added, as Green’s relatives wept in the audience.
Still, unlike the Oklahoma City bombing 15 years ago, which united Americans against the threat of militia-fueled domestic terrorism, the Arizona killings and their aftermath of partisan finger-pointing over the role of violent rhetoric, create a more ambiguous imperative for Obama.
Yet like President Bill Clinton in Oklahoma City a decade-and-half ago, Obama was clearly intent on re-situating the presidency from a place of partisanship to a higher elevation of reconciliation, healing and moderation.
“Those who are killed are part of our family, an American family,” Obama said, echoing Clinton’s speech delivered in the shadow of the demolished Alfred P. Murrah federal building in the spring of 1995.
Obama, a writer known to hover over speech drafts, chose his words with particular care this time, toiling over minutest details of language even as Air Force One entered the airspace over Tucson Wednesday afternoon, aides said.
“It’s a unique tragedy, a unique speech and there are a million hornets’ nests to avoid,” an administration official told POLITICO just before the speech. “He’s a person who understands you have to be responsible, and how you can’t be irresponsible about the microphone that you have been given.”
Obama spent much of the four-hour flight to Arizona going over the draft. It was written by chief speechwriter Jon Favreau and senior adviser David Axelrod, who have worked with him on virtually all of his speeches since the start of the 2008 campaign.
Joining them was Cody Keenan, a junior member of the speechwriting staff known for his elegant writing style – a former writer for late Sen. Edward Kennedy, who impressed the president with the eulogy he wrote for Kennedy’s funeral in August 2009.
“He’s particularly good at capturing emotion,” a person close to Obama added.
If Obama has sometimes been criticized for his inability to express empathy in public, he had no such trouble on Wednesday night. In a dramatic flourish reminiscent of speeches given by the president’s stylistic idol, Ronald Reagan, Obama revealed the stunning news that Giffords “opened her eyes for the first time” shortly after he visited her in intensive care.
As he spoke, First Lady Michelle Obama gripped hands with Giffords’ husband, astronaut Mark Kelly.
His speech, interrupted by cheering and applause repeatedly, touched even his most implacable political opponents, including a teary-eyed Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.). Phoenix-area Republican Rep. Trent Franks, who once questioned the legality of Obama’s birth certificate and called him an “enemy of humanity” for supporting abortion rights – embraced the president after the speech.
Not everyone was impressed. Columnist Michael Gerson, the author of President George W. Bush’s most eloquent speeches when he was his chief speechwriter, said on CNN that he found this speech to be preachy, overly long and given in an atmosphere that seemed more like a pep rally.
But many in the audience were moved to tears.
“When he turned to Christina and talked about how we have to live up to her dreams, it struck me on a very emotional level,” Tucson resident Raymond Sands said. “I have four children of my own. I’m here with my oldest daughter so she can be safe and we can share in solidarity with everyone.”
Democrat Betty Snider, a 73-year-old retiree from the farming town of Benson, said she’s been blaming inflammatory rhetoric from conservatives for what happened Saturday. But the president’s words changed her mind.
“He really wants us to heal, heal the hurt we’re feeling and don’t react in a negative way,” she said. “I’m so angry at the other party. I think they caused this but then he is saying, ‘Don’t feel that way.’ It made me rethink the whole thing.”
Still, the mood at the arena was an odd mixture of solemnity, excitement over the visit of a president many in the audience had supported, and hope that the crime wouldn’t define a complex and colorful city.
Asked if the cheering in the arena was appropriate, Tucson Mayor Bob Walkup, a Republican, replied:
“Yes! If there was one thing that was appropriate, it was cheering. I’ve been in the hospital, and the people that are healing, they want to hear people cheer.”
Abby Phillip, Scott Wong and Meredith Shiner in Tucson contributed to this report.
Obama is continuing in his 2012 campaign with this appearance in AZ. What an asshole
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