Obama Plans Call for Unity at Memorial for Tucson Victims

Is Tucson Obama's Oklahoma City?

Well, no actually. But the political similarities are fascinating, and it's certainly time for the president to make good on his pledge to heal the nation's partisan wounds. Those aren't metaphorical anymore. See Mara Liasson, "'Consoler In Chief': Tough Role In Partisan Times."

The White House is making plans for President Obama to visit Tuscon, Ariz., in the aftermath of the deadly shooting there, although a person familiar with the president's schedule tells NPR that the details of Wednesday's visit were still being worked out.

In the past, presidents have been able to unify the country during moments like these. But in today's hyperpartisan political climate, even those potentially unifying moments can be hard to pull off.

Many Americans look to the president for reassurance in times of tragedy. At these times, he is the "consoler in chief." Ronald Reagan, for example, performed this role beautifully in his speech honoring the astronauts who died when the space shuttle Challenger blew up in 1986.

"We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye, and slipped the surly bonds of Earth, to touch the face of God," he said.

George W. Bush had an impromptu but affective moment as he shouted through a bullhorn on top of a pile of rubble at the World Trade Center site in September 2001: "I can hear you, the rest of the world hears you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon."

Reagan spoke after a terrible accident; Bush after coordinated terrorist attacks. But in 1995, President Bill Clinton faced a situation more similar to the one Obama faces today: an attack on federal employees at the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City.

"Let us let our own children know that we will stand against the forces of fear," he said at the memorial service for the Oklahoma City bombing victims. "When there is talk of hatred, let us stand up and talk against it. When there is talk of violence, let us stand up and talk against it. In the face of death, let us honor life."

More at the link.

Laisson has more from McCurry, who suggests that an "Oklahoma City moment" is impossible "in a time when we chew up and spit out political ramifications more quickly than 16 years ago."

I don't quite buy that. The evidence is inconclusive that the political environment is more politically polarized than it was in the 1990s. I do think that the changing mass media environment has an amplification effect --- that the loudest and most vitriolic voices receive outsized airtime, and this is exacerbated by the reverberations of ideological cocooning. The feedback from the most strident voices in the MFM and netroots fever swamps gains a favorable hearing in the Democrat Party establishment, where we've seen a deep and lasting move to the ideological left in recent years (at the congressional level today the party is bolstered by a striking number of ideological socialists).

In any case, see also NYT, "Obama Speech to Focus on Serving Country."

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