Can the slaughter of children in a small elementary school in suburban Connecticut have global implications? Can it change not only the gun politics of America, but also the broader political mood in the country? Can it help transform a cautious president into a bolder one, a calculating man into one of vision and action? Can that president go from a first term full of speeches about great principles to a second one in which he actually takes steps to fulfill at least some of the promise of those speeches?
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Barack Obama is a cool customer. Those closest to him will acknowledge it. His supporters frame it as a strength, and in some circumstances it clearly is. But it has also been a weakness. Too often he has been too inclined to do the math, split the difference, be expedient. During his first term this was clear on big issues -- on climate, on extending the Bush tax cuts, on Afghanistan and, as we have all too acutely felt again in recent days, on guns.
But Obama is also a father of young girls. The degree to which the horror and the heartbreak of Newtown touched him was palpable, whether it was in his first remarks on Friday or during his extraordinary Sunday night address to the people most affected by the school murders. It was not just the flicking away of tears that illustrated how deeply he was moved. It was the degree to which he set aside -- finally -- that characteristic Obama caution.
American leaders rarely do what Obama did Sunday night. I don't recall the last time I heard an American president so bluntly state that we were failing our children and our obligations to one another as a nation. "Can we honestly say that we're doing enough to keep our children, all of them, safe from harm?" he asked. "If we're honest with ourselves, the answer's no. We're not doing enough. And we will have to change."
He did not mention guns. He didn't have to. It was clear that he was saying 300 million guns in circulation is too many. It was clear he was saying that 30,000 gun deaths a year is an abomination. The United States has spent some $3 trillion combating terror since 9/11, and guns at home have killed twice as many Americans as terrorists have killed people worldwide since then. It is not just a national scandal. It is a disease, a fundamental and profound flaw in our national character.
What if Newtown changed Obama for the better in much the way that 9/11 changed Bush for the worse? What if it produced real soul-searching -- if only for a moment -- and an acknowledgement that the greatest American leaders have been measured and distinguished by how they made us better than we were before? Whether it was the founders initiating our long struggle with the challenges of democracy, Lincoln ending slavery, Roosevelt committing us to helping the weakest among us, or Johnson shepherding through landmark civil rights laws, these men had the courage to say, "We can do better." National challenges reveal the true character of both America's presidents and its people.
Obama knows better than anyone that changing our gun laws won't be easy. He knows the forces that are arrayed against them. But he also saw them in disarray and retreat this weekend, with the National Rifle Association taking down its Facebook page and the 31 senators who advertise themselves as "pro-gun" refusing a chance to defend their position on "Meet the Press." Heavily armed America went into hiding. He sensed perhaps that the shock of Friday might start, indeed might have already started to color the rest of the political debate in Washington. And maybe -- better still -- he stopped caring so much about whether it did or not.
For decades, serious efforts at gun control had been a third rail in American politics. Tragedy after tragedy would occur -- Columbine, Virginia Tech, Tucson, Aurora -- and nothing would be done. The Supreme Court, wrong as it had been on Dred Scott and Citizens United, would reassert that an anachronistic provision in the U.S. Constitution guaranteed a broad right to gun ownership, and pols would just shrug. The gun lobby was seen as potent and gun owners were seen as key to electoral margins. Every day 30 people died from gunshot wounds --in other words, every day, another Newtown -- because what passes for the smart money in that D.C. said doing anything about it would be too hard.
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