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Obama’s speech likely bound for history books

14 January 2011 04:54 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. It’s still early, but it already seems like President Obama’s eulogy for the Arizona shooting victims is bound for many an Obama biography, APA reports quoting USA Today.
Many conservative critics of Obama’s presidency are giving high marks to his call for national unity in the wake of tragedy.
In a post entitled "the non-accusatory case for civility," Rich Lowry of National Review wrote that Obama "subtly rebuked the Left’s finger-pointing, and rose above the rancor of both sides, exactly as a president should. Tonight, he re-captured some of the tone of his famous 2004 convention speech. Well done."
(Rich also noted that "the pep-rally atmosphere was inappropriate and disconcerting," Obama still managed "a magnificent performance.")
Gail Collins, writing in The New York Times, says that "maybe President Obama was saving the magic for a time when we really needed it:"We’ve been complaining for two years about the lack of music and passion in his big speeches. But if he’d moved the country when he was talking about health care or bailing out the auto industry, perhaps his words wouldn’t have been as powerful as they were when he was trying to lift the country up after the tragedy in Tucsonâ€.
The president’s health care or bailout speeches may not be recalled by history, but the eloquent Obama -- also a fine writer -- is building up an impressive body of work.
The 2004 convention speech that Lowry mentioned -- the one in which he said there is no red state America, no blue state America, only the United States of America -- introduced the Illinois legislator to a national audience.
Obama’s 2008 speech on race relations in America will be seen as key turning point in the successful campaign of the nation’s first African-American president.
And his 2009 speech in Cairo on the reaching out to the Muslim world will be analyzed -- and debated -- for as long as people study the Obama presidency.
The Arizona memorial speech, delivered at a time of intense partisanship and polarization, seems likely to join the Obama canon.