WHAT PRICE POLITICAL ADVANTAGE?

Obama was good, I mean really good, at the podium in Tucson. Before a packed house, with the overflow in a football stadium, the President got back his mojo. Do I sound like I’m making politics out of tragedy? I sure am. So is the White House, although in all fairness, I don’t believe for a moment that that was their intent. The tragedy gave Obama the chance of his presidential lifetime. Finally, people are cheering for his message of cooperation and a return to civility in politics.

That it took a shocking episode at the hands of an unbalanced man with an automatic pistol should not matter. But it does. In one fell swoop the president has managed to upstage the Tea {Party, who after all, are the ones most responsible for the loss of civility.) He has trumped all the Glen Becks and Rush Limbaugh and Sara Palins.

America looked at itself in the mirror. It did not like what it saw. It felt shame and it felt remorse. And, I have to be cynical; I am betting that the popularity poll on the day of Obama’s speech in Tucson is way up. It was already climbing up at 50%. In the next few days the new numbers will be in.

It is still obvious, judging by the mouthings of the Fox news ranters, that the solid Right had no good words for their enemy. But above it all, the man was utterly presidential. He rose above politics and perhaps even upstaged that upstart, that grossly misunderstood “Great Communicator.” (I say “grossly misunderstood, because he got nothing but credit while his record was abysmal.)

To compound the misery for the extreme Right, Palin, instead of calling for civility, blamed “blood libel.” In one fell swoop she put herself back close to political oblivion, while at the same time losing whatever Jewish vote she might have had. That she reinforced herself with her core supporter is beyond question. Some people cling hopelessly to disgraced dogmas.

Most Republicans are red-faced. They should be. The event, which of course was beyond reason, has put them on the defensive. It is they who have fostered the new political un-civility, if for no other reason than their embrace of the Tea Party people.

Just go back for TV clips of the signs those people took to rallies. Read the epithets, the slanders, the insults, and the stupidity. It has now come back to haunt them.

I am not optimistic enough to predict a nationwide Epiphany. The passion and grief will recede. It will be business as usual. The Republican leadership will go back to declaring that they want to beat Obama in 2012, and that that is their central focus. They won’t be able to hide behind the political fiction that they “listened to the voters.” The voters were confused. They were angry because millions were without jobs and the country seemed to be going nowhere.

One cataclysmic event has changed the political texture of American life. Not forever, but at least for now.