Politics: Today Is a Day for Tears, Not Politics

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Politics Today Is a Day for Tears, Not Politics The president's job today is to comfort a nation, not score political points. By John Dickerson Posted Friday, Dec 14, 2012, at 11:28 PM ET Read the rest of Slate's coverage of the Sandy Hook school shooting. Maybe I spend too much time listening to politicians. Maybe I can't get past seeing my children in that line of kids holding hands as they're being led through the Sandy Hook school parking lot. But I don't want to hear President Obama talk about gun control six hours after the shooting. When he spoke this afternoon, he said there will be time to take action and then he returned the focus to where it should be, on the parents grieving over the loss of those 20 children. We're all trying to come to terms with today's tragedy and for a lot of people that means talking about gun control or fighting against it. For others it's about mental health. It's probably about both. Have at it. Light up Twitter. But the president's job today is not to get into that debate. His job is to lend some comfort to those parents who thought they were going to have family movie night tonight or whose biggest worry today was supposed to be how to beat the weekend traffic on their annual holiday trip. (You can argue that a president shouldn't play this role, but this is the one we have come to cast him in.) "We never come out here," a local television reporter just said of Newtown, Conn., which was always too sleepy and calm to make ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate National Review Writer Doubts the Power of the Bushmaster AR-15 Pro-Gun Senator Says It's Time To Discuss Assault Weapon Ban After a 1996 Mass Shooting, Australia Enacted Strict Gun Laws. It Hasn't Had a Similar Massacre Since.	Advertisement
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