Friday opinion, and a study in contrast. There's this:
The Caucus:
Reaction to President Obama’s speech at the memorial service in Arizona on Wednesday night has been almost uniformly positive, even from some of his sharpest critics.
Some conservative bloggers took shots at Mr. Obama, saying the event — at a basketball arena with thousands of college students in the crowd — came off more like a pep rally than a memorial service.
But aside from that, most of the conversation on cable television, Web sites and Twitter has been about Mr. Obama getting the tone right.
Dan Balz:
President Obama did not miss the moment. From the generally positive overnight reaction, Obama's speech in Tucson on Wednesday night struck just the right notes. Amid grief over a senseless tragedy and against a raging debate that threatened to further divide the country, the president urged healing and reconciliation.
And there's that:
The Caucus:
Ms. Palin’s decision to post the video on the internet Wednesday morning all but invited comparisons to the president’s previously announced appearance at the memorial service for those slain in Arizona.
And her choice of words — most notably the accusation that her critics were guilty of "blood libel" for the things they have said about her — made it impossible to ignore the video as merely another statement from a politician.
Mother Jones:
Hours before a congressional prayer service for the victims of the shooting rampage, Republican lawmakers made it clear they didn't want to go near the former Alaska governor's inflammatory remarks.
Stephen Stromberg:
Before this, the president also insisted that no one should be assigning blame for the tragedy beyond the apparently deranged mind of the shooter. So, all told, he offered some gentle, equal-opportunity nudging for pundits and partisans to do better. As jarring as the applause was at times, Obama's words and demeanor were reasonable and beyond appropriate, the president smiling only as he described the heroism of those who wrestled the shooter to the ground. The speech is among the few things I've read or heard since Saturday about which I can say that, and all the more necessary after the grotesque "blood libel" rage that dominated the news most of Wednesday.
First Read:
The Incredibly Shrinking Palin? The president’s speech made Palin’s response look very small by comparison. While Obama tried to uplift, Palin tried to settle scores. While the president called for more civility, the former Alaska governor talked about duels and "blood libel." And while Obama’s message was, well, presidential, Palin’s was not. We’ll say this: If Palin has ambitions for the White House -- and we’re still not sure she does -- then her tone, message, and timing from her eight-minute video was a serious miscalculation. Is this what happens when you live in a bubble? Is this what happens when you don't have advisers you trust that live outside her bubble? Palin's speech struck as a natural response only if she spent the last three days reading every nasty email and Tweet she received, and didn't extract herself from the story.
Dave Weigel responds:
Well, yes? We know that Palin spends a lot of time online, and on her iPad, and we know that she got a huge surge in death threats varying in their seriousness. As my colleague John Dickerson points out, mentions "Palin" on Twitter, on Saturday, spiked along with mentions of "Giffords." Palin is a private citizen; it is harder to create distance from the threats than it is for, say, President Obama, who has a huge security apparatus ready to thwart them. Her response was perfectly understandable.
It was also incredibly small -- like, Alice after she chugs the "Drink Me" bottle small. On Wednesday morning I noticed a number of conservatives, mostly on Twitter, praising Palin's tone and scope, as if it was matched to the moment. It was not matched to the moment. A speechwriter right out of school could tell you that the proper response to tragedy is a tribute to the lives of the fallen. Palin acknowledged the fallen, but did not talk about their now well-reported lives. It was a callow mess.
Michael Crowley:
But when it became clear both that Palin had indeed given offense--not just to liberal Jewish advocacy groups but also to some of her sympathizers--and that the reaction was clouding her intended message, she should have been more nimble. Assuming that Palin did not actually mean to invoke an old anti-Semitic trope, even a quick Tweet clarifying and apologizing to anyone who took offense would have been a winning move. Palin would have looked gracious, sensitive and--even if she generally avoids on-the-spot questioning from non-friendly media outlets--responsive to legitimate criticism. Not holed up in her Alaskan homestead pretending she is infallible.
Mark Green:
But as of today, there has been one political ramification of note -- Sarah Palin is done as a presidential candidate. After her video disparaging critics as guilty of a "blood libel," she should be shunned and will be shunned. As John Kenneth Galbraith said of Black Monday in 1929, "the end had come but was not yet in sight."
Mediaite:
But it isn’t merely that Frum thinks Palin did not come off as presidential– she came off even less presidential than she has in the past. "She’s mad– that showed. She’s madder than she is sad. She’s very wounded by what has been done to her," he explained, a sentiment he found inappropriate in comparison to the gravity of the event she was discussing.
As for her presidential ambitions, Frum concluded with an apt metaphor for an Alaskan politician: "She’s like a big melting iceberg in warm water, and I think a big chunk of ice just slipped off the side."
And all of that will lead to what? Better tone for a few weeks, with the House forced to recalibrate their surveying instruments. And then we'll see.
In light of the shootings, the health care debate will be closely watched to see if lawmakers show new restraint after calls from President Obama and many others to bring a more civil tone to political discourse. In his statement, Mr. Dayspring said, "It is our expectation that the debate will continue to focus on those substantive policy differences surrounding the new law."
Paul Krugman:
There’s no middle ground between these views. One side saw health reform, with its subsidized extension of coverage to the uninsured, as fulfilling a moral imperative: wealthy nations, it believed, have an obligation to provide all their citizens with essential care. The other side saw the same reform as a moral outrage, an assault on the right of Americans to spend their money as they choose.
But let's end with good news:
But Giffords didn't stop there, Gillibrand said. She reached out and grabbed her husband "and is touching him and starts to really choke him like she was really trying to hug him." He asked her to touch his wedding ring, "and she touches his ring, then she grabs his whole watch and wrist and then the doctor was just so excited, he said, 'You don't understand ... this is amazing what she is doing right now and beyond our greatest hopes.' "
WaPo:
Doctors treating Rep. Gabrielle Giffords said Thursday she has reached "a major milestone" medically with her ability to open her eyes and seemingly respond to her surroundings as she recovers from a gunshot wound to the head.