After the Horror, Inspiration

[Geee]

National Review:


In his superb speech in Tucson, Ariz., Wednesday evening, Pres. Barack Obama did great service to the nation. He put to rest the libel that political incivility is responsible for the Tucson shootings. He did so with three words that he added to the written text: “It did not.”

And he lifted the spirits not only of the inappropriately boisterous audience in the McKale Center, but of people across America, when he reported, after paying moving tribute to those who died, that “Gabby opened her eyes for the first time.”

For even as we mourn those lost, we take comfort in knowing that the target of the attack has survived and that she seems to be recovering rapidly, even miraculously.
It is important for national morale that we foil the purposes of the mad and evil persons who seek to assassinate our public officials. This is something that was recognized almost 30 years ago, when Ronald Reagan was struck by a bullet.

On the Senate floor, when notified that Reagan was still alive, Daniel Patrick Moynihan said: “I was glad to hear how well the president is recovering, but there’s something larger at stake. I do not know that in our time we have seen such a display. It makes us proud of our president.”

For Moynihan, and for all Americans of a certain age in 1981, the memory and national trauma of John F. Kennedy’s assassination was still vivid.