Within hours of the mass shooting in Arizona, former Newsweek editor
Howard Fineman on Saturday was offering Barack Obama tips on how to
manipulate the outburst of violence for his political advantage.
Making comparisons to Bill Clinton's response to the Oklahoma City
bombing, he lobbied, "...Obama may be able to remind voters of what they
like best about him: his sensible demeanor. Amid the din and ferocity
of our political culture, he respectfully keeps his voice down, his
emotions in check and his mind open."
The piece, which appeared on the left-wing Huffington Post [1], featured this coldly calculating follow-up: "That
is the pitch, at least. The trick is to make it without seeming to be
trying to make it. He will, after all, be speaking at a funeral."
Fineman
urged Obama to portray himself and the wounded Representative Gabrielle
Giffords, who has a lifetime American Conservative Union score of 14 [2] ,
as thoughtful centrists. He wrote, "He and Giffords think of themselves
as fellow travelers on a middle path of civility and compromise in a
dangerous world. The president will likely argue that, implicitly if not
explicitly."
Fineman wasn't the only one who began measuring this tragedy for politicl gain. The Wall Street Journal's [3]John Fund wrote:
Politico.com quoted one veteran Democratic operative saying that the
Obama White House should use the tragedy to score political points.
"They need to deftly pin this on the tea partiers," he said. "Just like
the Clinton White House deftly pinned the Oklahoma City bombing on the
militia and anti-government people." Indeed, at the time of the bombing
in 1995, then-Clinton strategist Dick Morris had penned a memo on how
the tragedy could lead to a "permanent possible gain" because it "sets
up Extremist issue vs. Republicans."
- Scott Whitlock is a news analyst for the Media Research Center. Click here [4] to follow him on Twitter.