The White House on Thursday was downplaying political calculations following President Obama’s well-received Tucson speech, including whether it was likely to change perceptions about the president’s level of empathy. “I don’t want to get into political prognosticating,” said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. “I think the president over the course of his career has done a pretty good job touching on the hopes and the aspirations and the dreams of many in this country.”
After a stirring and personal memorial speech, Obama was back at the White House and largely out of view Thursday, attending meetings with staff and his National Security Council.
But in Washington, tallying up political winners and losers is a knee-jerk activity with little respect for tragedy.
For Obama, the speech built on a nudge of momentum he picked up in the polls over the weekend. Notably, an AP-GfK poll found Obama with a 53 percent job approval rating, up from 47 percent in November.
Doug Muzzio, a political scientist at Baruch College, part of the City University of New York, said laying low is probably a smart play for Obama right now.
“My personal reaction was that I watched the speech with my wife and I turned to her and said, ‘Where has this guy been for the last year?'” Muzzio said.
Obama’s major turn as consoler in chief was not technically his first appearance in the role. Last year, he spoke at a memorial service for 29 men who died in a West Virginia mine explosion.
And in 2009, Obama spoke to 15,000 people at a remembrance for the victims of a gunman’s attack at Ford Hood, Texas, that left 13 dead and 42 wounded.
Neither event, nor the president’s subsequent commemorations, resulted in a notable rise in his polling numbers. For much of his presidency, and especially after the BP oil spill, Obama has been faulted by critics for his aloofness and apparent inability to connect emotionally with Americans.
But the public nature of the attack at a Safeway store in Tucson, combined with the stories of the victims and the injuries sustained by the apparent target, Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, touched a collective nerve for many Americans.
Generally, such so-called crisis bumps in the polls are short-lived for presidents. Former President George W. Bush had a 86 percent approval rating, his record high, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He ultimately left office with his lowest-ever public approval rating of 23 percent.
Obama also may have benefited from the contrast provided by Sarah Palin, said Bob Stein, a Rice University political scientist and pollster.
The former governor of Alaska and possible 2012 Republican presidential contender released an Internet video hours before Obama’s speech, blaming the media and invoking the term “blood libel” against claims by liberals and others that her rhetorical style is in some way culpable for fueling violence.
“It was not only what she said, but how uniformly criticized it was by Republicans,” Stein said. “What Obama got out of this was Palin.”
