WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama faces a moment fraught with risk but shrouded in political opportunity when he leads a national memorial service for the dead of the Arizona shooting tragedy.
Obama will Wednesday eulogize the victims and chart a path ahead for a political community convulsed by shock, after a gunman's failed assassination bid on an Arizona lawmaker killed six and wounded 14.
Presidents, in their symbolic roles as head of state and commander-in-chief are periodically required to invoke unity in a moment of crisis, weaving shocking events into a parable of American history and national mythology.
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They have summoned poetry, like Ronald Reagan after a space shuttle disaster in 1986, or prose pulsing with resolve, like George W. Bush in his National Cathedral address after the September 11 attacks in 2001.
Such speeches are "a way to take a tragedy and to be sober and somber but also to use it as a way to bring the country together and to move it forward," said political science professor Jamie McKown.
Obama's task is particularly testing, given the political fury that spewed onto the airwaves almost as soon as congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was gunned down on Saturday.
Liberal claims that a climate of conservative hate whipped up by the likes of Sarah Palin may have tipped accused gunman Jared Loughner over the edge exposed the malign divisions of US politics.
They also made Obama's task, in framing the tragedy, without further aggravating the mood, even more demanding.
Obama will likely avoid assigning blame, and instead honor the dead, while offering counsel for the living.
[In pictures: President Obama and the Tucson tragedy]
"The President began working on his speech last night, he is thinking through what he wants to say," a White House official said Tuesday.
"He will devote most of his remarks to memorializing the victims."
McKown, of the College of the Atlantic in Maine, said he believed Obama would "play it safe" and seek to sooth roiled political waters.
And the title of the memorial service at the University of Arizona, "Together We Thrive: Tucson and America" may offer a clue to his theme.
"The President believes that right now, the main thing we should be doing is offering our thoughts and prayers to those who've been impacted and making sure that we're joining together and pulling together as a country," said Nicholas Shapiro, a White House spokesman.
Many post-crisis presidential speeches recall the form of the Gettysburg address, Abraham Lincoln's tribute to Civil War fallen in 1863, which praised for the dead, and advice for the living.
In, 1995, Bill Clinton assumed the grief of Oklahoma City, after a bomb attack on a federal building killed 168 people, vowing justice would be done, while seeking to promote healing.
"Their legacy must be ours," he said, of the dead.
Clinton's task in navigating a political storm that day parallels Obama's -- then as now commentators blamed fiery conservative rhetoric for the anti-government attack.
After the shuttle Challenger exploded, Reagan, using an actor's gifts, sought to make sense out of a sudden tragedy.
His promise that the future "belongs to the brave" consoled schoolchildren who watched the disaster on live television, and steadied the US space program at a time of crisis.
Similarly, Obama sought to swap his formal presidential role for a more intimate connection with his audience on Monday, when he referred to the slaying of nine-year-old Christina-Taylor Green, a bystander in Arizona.
"As a President of the United States, but also as a father, obviously I'm spending a lot of time just thinking about the families and reaching out to them," said Obama, who has two young daughters.
[Photos: Arizona shooting victims mourned]
Commentators are already speculating whether Obama's leadership could improve his personal political stature, after the Republican mid-term election rout.
Polls have shown that much of Obama's 2008 electoral appeal lay in his claim to be a uniting figure at a time of political polarization.
That promise has not been fulfilled by his presidency, due to the combination of his policies and a deeply partisan climate.
But as he contemplates reelection, an appeal to calm could allow Obama to re-engage voters on a theme that underpinned his early political career.
Clinton matched the mood of the moment after Oklahoma, and saw his approval ratings rise, after his own mid-term election drubbing by Republicans.
Yet the swift pace of US politics and the public's limited attention span, make it unclear whether voters will remember Arizona 2011 in November 2012.
And, Obama has appeared more adept at tub thumping campaign speeches, than the intimate, sober soliloquies of a president in power.
