The political vitriol which both preceded and follows the shooting in Tucson, Arizona was temporarily halted today, when President Barack Obama made a speech at a memorial today. Paying tribute to those who had been killed, and in the case of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, seriously wounded, he acknowledged that "our hearts are broken". But, almost like the third act of an American film or in a manner befitting the fictional American President Josiah Bartlet of West Wing fame, Obama seemed to find again that hopeful, soaring rhetoric that governed his campaign for office, nearly three years ago.
Obama has had a year in which he has proved to be a divisive President. From healthcare reform, to the failure to bring the unemployment numbers, to the "shellacking" he, and the Democratic Party suffered at the hands of the Republicans last November, it has been a difficult, and sometimes gridlocked year.
Yet the reason, perhaps, that Obama has become such an antagonistic, polemic figure in the eyes of the Tea Party is simply because he has allowed himself to be; public political discourse has turned against him, because running the country prohibits him from being a part of it.
Today, he proved why he may confidently win re-nomination and re-election in 2012. For, with one speech, he once again spoke in the language of hope, unity, heroism and patriotism that defines him. Obama's greatest asset in the increasingly divisive conservative-liberal debate that has surrounded the Tucson shootings is his ability to rise above it, to condemn it and challenge it. Obama is a new President in his use of Facebook, Twitter, but his rhetoric is in the best tradition of some of the greatest United States Presidents, it is introspective without being indulgent, and inspiring without being controversial. It is a lesson that Tea Party activists, Republican contenders could do with learning. Obama's oratory creates the myth of one, strong, familial America and a cynic could brush this aside; but at least it is a united America, not one which hates its government, or its President. It's an America which can be better, which can shape its destiny. Just words maybe, but it's the poetry which Obama's government has lacked in recent months and needs to reclaim.
No comments:
Post a Comment