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MS. IFILL: Good evening. Seldom does a single event manage to leave its imprint on such a broad swath of the public debate. But the tragic shooting in Tucson plunged the nation and its elected leaders into a week of soul-searching that touched on the law, the limits of dispute, the protections offered by the Second Amendment, and heartbreakingly human stories of life, death, and the thin line that separates the two. As so often happens in these cases of focused national attention and grief, it fell to the president of the United States to weave those themes together.
PRES. OBAMA: Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let’s use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together.
MS. IFILL: President Obama’s appeal to the moral imagination won praise across the political spectrum. In an opinion piece posted today in the “Washington Post,” Arizona Republican Senator John McCain called it a terrific speech. “We are Americans and fellow human beings,” he wrote. “And that shared distinction is so much more important than the disputes that invigorate our noisy, rough-and-tumble political culture. That is what I heard the president say on Wednesday evening,” he said. “I commend him and thank him for it.”
So, Dan, with statements like that and statements from John McCain, who of course was very quiet all week, does this mean we’ve reached this moment of national comity?
MR. BALZ: Well, Gwen, I would put it a different way. I think that Tucson has caused the whole country, individually and collectively to kind of hit the pause button. When something like this happens, I think it’s natural for people to look at a lot of different aspects – the role of guns in society, how we treat people with mental illnesses. And certainly this week, one aspect of that has been how we conduct political discourse that we use in our democracy.
I think people are hopeful that this will bring some change, but I think we have to keep it in perspective. After 9/11 – 9/11 changed “everything” quote, unquote. And for a time, there was a great period of national unity. That quickly gave way to deep partisan polarization and I think we have to be prepared for some of that to re-emerge. The differences in this country politically are very deep and they’re very heartfelt, and sometimes they get expressed in ways that are over the top. And I think we’re at that moment where everybody individually is going to kind of say, well, how can I do what I normally do, but do it in a little softer volume? But I think the jury’s out as to whether there’s going to be any real permanent change as a result of this.
MS. IFILL: Janet, it felt like on the Hill, they were reaching for the right tone trying to figure out how do you continue with the seriously held disagreements you have with the other party and yet express grief for a colleague, concern for oneself, a lot of things were going on.
MS. HOOK: Yes, it was in Congress that they really hit the pause button. The Republicans had planned this week to be the first week of the new Republican majority in the House, and they were going to have their cornerstone vote on Wednesday to repeal President Obama’s health care bill. And they suspended the regular business, put that off until next week and they had one day of debate, debate on a resolution honoring the victims of the tragedy and Gabby Giffords. And it was actually a really unusual debate. It was like six hours scheduled and dozens and dozens, hundreds of members spoke and it was so unlike a typical House debate in that it was – it was very heartfelt. It kind of reminded you that Congress is in addition to being a legislative body, a community. A lot of people know Gabby Giffords and expressed their connections to it.
I think the bigger challenge isn’t what they did this week, it’s what they do next week. And I’m skeptical that it’ll have too much lasting impact on the nature of the debate, say, over the health care bill because that is deeply felt policy difference that – you can express your opposition in terms that are more civil than what happened in the campaign or when congressional offices were being vandalized, or some member of Congress had his electricity cut off after he voted for the bill.
So we’ll see next week. I don’t expect the political dynamics to change, but at least for one week maybe we’ll see a softer tone.
MS. IFILL: We’ve heard both Speaker John Boehner and President Obama, Chuck, use exactly the same verbiage, which was we can disagree without being disagreeable and then disagreeability usually ensues. Is that a word? So what do we see happening here? Do we see disagreement becoming respectful again, or do we just lapse back into where we were?
MR. BABINGTON: If I had to guess, Gwen, I would say we’re going to lapse back and that’s partly based on history. Dan mentioned 9/11, same thing after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Within that same year, we had such an impasse between the parties that the government shut down.
One thing that’s happening is that Congress and especially the House, is just becoming more and more partisan. And years ago, you had conservatives in the Democratic Party from the South; you had some liberals and definitely moderates in the Republican Party, mainly from the Northeast. Almost all those people have been defeated now. The realignment of the parties is virtually complete. And just last election, you had 60-some Democrats lose their seats, the great majority of those were the so-called “blue dog” Democrats, moderates.
So now you have a Democratic caucus – it’s a smaller of course, but it’s also more liberal. It’s more solidly liberal. And the Republican caucus is very conservative. And for those reasons, you have the systemic reasons that are making it harder and harder for this comity to take place.
