It would not have been difficult for President Obama to have stooped to partisan political rhetoric during his speech at last night's memorial service for victims of the Tucson shooting.
If anyone could speak to the senseless partisan insanity that divides this country, it would be a president who has been branded a socialist, a foreigner, and even a traitor by critics who start sounding the drumbeat before he even took the oath of office.
The two addresses that were the focus of the 24-hour news cycle Wednesday offered a sharp contrast. One was about six victims of a mad killer, those who survived the shooting, and the heroes who surfaced when they were most needed.
The other speech was a self-involved stunt masquerading as high-minded political rhetoric.
The timing of Sarah Palin's video was atrocious. It would have drawn attention had she released it Tuesday, and made it, as the president did, into a healing type of speech, the type of speech that presidents give.
Instead, the now infamous "blood libel" speech was just another instance of Sarah Palin throwing red meat to her legions of followers. It was the type of speech presidential wanna-bes give.
Presidents are in a unique position to start the process of healing in the nation. President Bush did a masterful job of doing just that after 9-11, just as President Clinton did after the Oklahoma City bombing, and President Reagan did after the Challenger explosion.
At that time, the best thing that others who are seeking or who are considering seeking the Oval Office can do is to either keep quiet or issue brief statements offering condolences or support.
You did not see Mike Huckabee releasing a video Wednesday, nor did you see one from Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Tim Pawlenty or any of the others whose names have been bandied about possible challengers to President Obama in 2012.
The only one who put herself on the same level as the president was Sarah Palin.
On a day that should have been about anything except politics, Mrs. Palin offered a seven minute, 43 second speech that not only wallowed in politics, but placed herself at the same level of victimhood as those who lost their lives in Tucson last Saturday.
At a time when this country desperately needed the politics of hope, all Mrs. Palin had to offer was the politics of anger.
The Republican Party has many candidates who could inspire a nation with the same calm and inner reserve that presidents have always called on when the nation most needs it.
Sarah Palin has no place on that list.
Let's analyze this... The President speaks at a prime-time made-for TV memorial service...It seemed at times almost like a campaign rally...maybe it was. Why not have a small intimate service attended by family members and close friends of the victims? You could still televise it...the nation would still heal. Too much theatrics.
ReplyDeleteGood post, Randy.
ReplyDeleteSarah, we can see in your eyes the fear of being forgotten and cast aside.
ReplyDeleteWhat most casual observers of politics forget is that the pendulum swings. Just ask Newt Gingrich how that Contract with America worked out on balancing the budget and term limits. Or, just for fun, compare and contrast Sarah Palin and her Tea party with Ross Perot and his Reform Party. Hmmmm... When most of America tires of Palin and the Tea Party she'll be dismissed and forgotten. She's got no chance at the ballot box now.
Can you imagine, if she tried to run for president, what kind of anti-Palin attack WillieHorton/SwiftBoat/527 ad could be put together by a strategist with the ethics of Carl Rove? I can see it now...images of the Arizona shooting with a voice over of Palin saying "don't retreat...reload" a picture of Palin's gun target map and her hunting exploits paired with her talking about targeting politicians... pictures of nasty hate-filled Tea Party rally signs...with a final narrator asking if this is the direction we want for our country and our children. It would be chilling. Unfair, but chilling.
There was no comparison of the lovely speech given by our President and the ramblings of the Right, i.e. Palin.
ReplyDeleteEven Speaker Boehner, I'm sorry to say because I like John Boehner, I don't agree with him but I LIKE the guy, appeared more unstable than somber in his tear laced speech.
I'm proud of the President and the high road he took and the way he challenged all of us to take.
President Obama is a statesman and a gentleman. There is a true, immediate, and obvious difference between him and his aggressive detractors.
We needed to hear from him again, we needed to know he's back.
-Angelfire-
You would think it was January 2012 and the politicians on both sides were trying to 'spin' it to suit them.
ReplyDeleteTurner and the rest of the liberal clowns simply can't resist making cheap shots in order to attain what they want more than anything else -- speech and gun control over what little remains of White Christian America.
And so they whine and carp and bellyache about the current choice of straw-dog the Republican Establishment are propping up to lose against the incompetent Kenyan halfrican-AmeriKwan Obama. Caribou Barbie is even dumber than Dumbya, whose every single policy of losing two ground wars in Asia, bailing out the banksters, and hyper-inflating the currency Obongo has both called -- and raised.
The only way that the Man-kenyan Candidate can possibly win against the 'Anyone Except Obongo' landslide is to get a real loser sockpuppet of the big corporations and Wall Street to run some false opposition, like McCain did in 2008. Someone like Caribou [Klaus] Barbie Sarah Palin.
So, stop drooling, pick up your tongues, and keep on whining in order to get the most moronic portion of the country to rubberstamp for Palin's nomination.
And, by the way, I sort of like it when the [d]ruling chattering classes have to worry about how some nut with a concealable gun sporting a couple of 30-round magazines gives the politicians 'something to look forward to.' There ain't no shortage of guns or nuts or nuts with guns as mentally deranged desperate losers with a grudge against a decaying and declining social order which they hate start putting not only the blame on the politicians and judges out there, but now a serious smackdown with hot lead to show that they is serious. Not even Josef Stalin could curb an entire dygenic social order on the verge of collapse armed to the teeth like this one, even though History teaches that Chaos leads to Dictatorship.
Frankly, I don't want to live in peace with you liberals no more. I think that breaking this mighty Evil Empire through civil war into ten-thousand petty fiefdoms with 10,000 warlords ruling over less than 10 million survivors is looking better and better each day. And that is the way things are looking up right now.
I have to agree in part with Hitler in 2012: why does the 20% of the nation that self-identifies as "Liberal" continue to provoke the 40% that call themselves Conservatives? We're the well armed faction; just what are you trying to accomplish when you make it clear you will never "live in peace" with us?
ReplyDeleteObama and W were/are wanna-be's as well when it comes to true Presidents. The White House may never attract another true presidential individual. People with those qualities do not want the job.
ReplyDelete