Rethinking the President's speech

So where was BHO for four days after the murders when lots of his allies were doing everything but arraigning conservatives as accessories to murder?  Why did he wait until the blood libel had failed to speak out for 'civility'?  Byron York asks the hard question:

BYRON YORK: Rethinking Obama’s political performance in Tucson. 

“By the time he spoke in Tucson, Obama had let four days pass while some of the angriest voices in the media — his supporters — either blamed Republicans directly for the killings or blamed the GOP for creating the atmosphere in which the violence took place. During those four days, the president could have cooled the conversation by urging everyone to avoid jumping to conclusions, as he did the day after the November 2009 massacre at Ft. Hood, Texas. But he didn’t. Only after Loughner’s insanity had been indisputably established did Obama concede that politics was not to blame for the shooting. . . . Some Democratic strategists hope Obama can capitalize on Tucson the way Bill Clinton capitalized on Oklahoma City. Perhaps he’ll be able to, and perhaps he won’t. But he’s already trying.”

Victor Davis Hanson takes it as a sign of a little bit of 'growth' - getting through his rookie years.


VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Chrysalis Opens.

The new Barack Obama has learned not to offer instantaneous editorial commentary in the fashion of his past editorializing on hearing of the Skip Gates affair, the Mutallab bombing attempt, the Ground Zero mosque controversy or the Maj. Hasan mass murdering. 

Instead, the metamorphosizing president put his finger to the wind. He soon learned that his leftist base within 72 hours had turned off the public with its demagogic charges of conservative culpability for a deranged killer murdering the innocent. And so Obama summarily jettisoned his leftist scapegoating base. In dispassionate fashion, he figured that within hours the New York Times et al. would Trotskyize their earlier narratives, and most of the Left would cease the poll-killing (excuse the metaphor) “climate of hate” narrative. 

He was right. The progressive community snapped back into line, reminding the country that the desire for power and status always trumps ideology. . . . Will Obama 2.0 work? Perhaps, especially if conservatives ornate the Clinton ’96 analogy with their own Bob Dole in 2012. But all that said, the wages of hubris—nemesis—are not so easily forgotten.