Yesterday

Late Tuesday, we were treated to the Rushbo saying that the whole Democratic Party was behind the assassin and that Sheriff Dupnik wanted Jared Laughner out of jail. You see, the 75-year old sheriff didn't mince any words about the talk show hosts who get paid millions to stir hate up and mentioned Limbaugh by name. Rushbo didn't realize he can't huff and puff like he does with GOP members who don't toe the line.Someone 75 tends to speak their mind no matter how rich his accuser is.

By early morning the Rusbo asserted that the Left did have a hit list, which was composed of everyone who had been a success under capitalism.

Sharron Angle came out to defend herself, the teabaggers and Sarah Palin against attacks they fomented the environment that led to the slaughter.

4 Republicans from the 20th legislative district in Arizona resigned for fear of violence from the Tucson Tea Party branch.

A man in Washngton state was arrested for threatening the life of Democrat Jim McDermott.

Then Yesterday began with the strange spectacle of Sarah Palin addressing the nation on Facebook. She made sure the comment section had been disabled for the speech. It was clear that she wanted to lead the news cycle for the day meant for the mourning of the victims in Tucson. From a media point of view, she wanted to set the agenda for the day. Speaking in front of an empty fireplace and the American flag hung crookedly, she claimed that the media suggested that the Right made Matzo ball soup of their enemies or something like that. She claimed that further attacks on the Right would lead to violence. She said that she and the Right would not back down and would argue their point vigorously as was their right and because American was exceptional. Reflected in her glasses was the hated teleprompter she always mocks when Obama uses it. Throughouther speech were a string of innuendos and code words attacking President Obama.

Well, she got her wish for attention. Her use of the line "blood libel" triggered a reaction from everyJewish group in the country and beyond, even the Yukon. Alan Dershowitz tried to assure television audiences Palin wasn't anti-semitic. The Republican Jewish Coalition said the words were "unfortunate". Others claimed she did't really know what "blood libel" meant and that she picked it up from other right-wing columnists. The phrase only triggered pogroms and massacres of Jews through the ages. The belief that Jews used the flesh of Christian children to make matzos is still circulated in the Middle East. It was popularized by the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages. Not helping was Pat Buchanan's endorsement of the phrase since he has just come off his stint as the author of a book saying that Hitler wasn't to blame for WWII.

Josh Marshall nailed it when he said that on the day when the nation was scheduled to mourn the victims of Tucson, Sarah Palin decided she was one of them. Andrea Mtchell, who sometimes doesn't have her head on straight, said Palin looked presidential. Joan Walsh wrote a piece about the whole episode in Salon saying that "The stunning narcissism and inability to even fake empathy show why she'll never lead the nation."

Palin got a break when attention moved to the ceremonies on the Hill where Boehner and Pelosi led tributes to the fallen and wounded. Instead of the repeal of healthcare, the House passed a resolution in honor of the Tucson tragedy and the victims who included Giffords aides, one slain and two wounded.

With the news cycle moving away,Palin's
aide tried to recapture the momentum by telling the press that threats against Palin have increased exponentially.This was matched on liberal blogs by the reproduction of the news articles who quoted Secret Service agents claiming that death threats against President Obama reached an unprecedented level after Palin's attacks on him during 2008 and 2009.

With the event in Tucson, John Boehner thought he had done his duty and decided to skip the ride down on Air Force One and host a cocktail party for his candidate for the RNC chair. The gossip about how he can't miss a drink finally forced an aide to issue a press release that Speaker Boehner would stop his speak at the cocktail party when President Obama spoke. Read Matt Tiabbi's piece in this week's Rolling Stone on John Boehner. It's catty but wise.

So now the table is set for President Obama's speech. We were told earlier that it would make or break his presidency. Why? We were also told he would have to surpass Reagan's Challenger Speech, Bill Clinton's Oklahoma Bombing Speech and George W at Ground Zero. The pressure was on. Clearly, Palin's aide and speechwriters thought Obama would let rip on the Right. I never know where these people get these ideas.

There were over 28,000 people at the speech--about 17,000 in the arena, the rest outside. This would make it equivalent to the audience President Obama addressed in his 2008 campaign in Oregon. The acoustics in the arena were made for basketball and are deafening. Television commentators like Dave Gergen thought the response to Obama's entrance and the speeches were inappropriate. Others commented on how disconcerting the joyous, celebratory mood was. It was in marked contrast to a sober and subdued President.

The situation the speech was meant to address was quite tricky.You have a community ostracised as a violent political place. The sheriff had even referred to Arizona as "the Mecca for prejusice and bigotry". You have the target of the assassination attempt still struggling to recover from a shot through her brain,six dead and 14 people still recovering. On top of that you have a flood of commentary and vicious debate over the political rhetoric that may or may not have trigger the angry young man. Somehow you have to weave through all this and come out the other end with both a reassuring and inspiring message.

The speakers rose to the occasion, even Arizona Governor Jan Brewer was gracious and made sure everyone knew that the President was welcomed to the state. I found Eric Holder's reading of the passage from II Corinthians odd because of its heavy Christological content. Janet Napolitano, the former Governor, read from Isaiah.

And then President Obama. Intending to speak for 17-18 minutes, he spoke over 34 minutes, largely because of the constant applause. The speech was political only in the largest sense. It was more a personal speech and you got the impression he dug deep into his own personal life and losses. It was the most direct speech he has given in his presidency. It was eloquent both in terms of its content but also its rhetorical flourishes.

He used the occasion to eulogize the slain through vignettes of their lives and captured the various acts of heroism committed that day. The entire focus was off the violence and on the people involved. He cited various heroes in the audience from the big, young intern Daniel Hernandez, who saved Congresswoman Giffords' life to the woman who grabbed the magazine from Jared Loughner. The unscripted part of the speech about Gabby Guffords opening her eyes for the first time was his sequeto the rousing last half of his speech. When he talked about the interns and aides, you could almost see the Obama who talked to his campaign staff after a primary loss.

Then he made his larger points over the death of Christina Green, the 9-year old who had been born on 9-11. He recounted how she was going to see Congresswoman Giffords because she was interested in politics and thought the Congresswoman would be a good role model. But Obama's point was that Green had not grown cynical as the adults about our democracy and thought it was good. This reminded me of President Obama's speech to the House Democrats encouraging them to vote for healthcare reform, when he reminded them of why they first got into politics. President Obama called for creating a country as good as Christina Green thought it was. He also talked about civility but only as far as it helps us address the broader issues facing the country. In his Reagan moment, he cited the inscription from the 9/11 book commemorating children born on that day saying ,"May you skip in Rainbow puddles." He said that if there were rainbow puddles in heaven, Christina would skipping them.

The early reaction to the speech is overwhelming comparing it to the Gettysburg Address, which FYI was panned at the time. Others said it surpassed the Challenger speech. David Gergen grouched that it didn't meet Clinton's address in Oklahoma. But from conservative to liberal, people were wowed.

What I found interesting was that conservatives, who really didn't want to stay in the crackpot corner,fully embraced it. Of course, they suggested Obama's refusal to say that the political environment triggeredhe event was a slap at the Left. I didn't take it that way, rather President Obama wanted to move it beyond politics,which he did. Charles Krauthammer said it was the moment that President Obama became head of state--that is the symbolic leader of all Americans. This is the real conservative's point about Reagan--he was the constitutional monarch who transcended nitty-gritty politics. Last night President Obama satisfied the conservative pundits he was such a man. Even the Washington Post's chief torture advocate Marc Thiessen called the speech "elegant and eloquent".

I just got the sense these people wanted President Obama to say something they could embrace so they could get out of the swamp, away from the Palins, Limbaughs and Glenn Becks. And he gave it to them. The entire Fox News crowd thought it was President Obama's best speech of his presidency.

Robert Alter, who wrote a bio of President Obama, had complained that Obama took Mario Cuomo's maxim too seriously--"You campaign in poetry but you govern in prose." Previous to the speech, he said it was necessary for Obama to use poetry on this occassion. Apparently, his conservative critics thought he did.