RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
In the past, presidents have been able to unify the country during tragic moments like these. In today's partisan climate, even these potentially unifying moments can be hard to pull off, as NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson reports.
MARA LIASSON: In times of tragedy, many Americans look to the president for reassurance. At these times, he is the consoler-in-chief. Ronald Reagan performed this role beautifully in his speech honoring the astronauts who died when the space shuttle Challenger blew up in 1986.
President RONALD REAGAN: We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God.
LIASSON: And George W. Bush had this impromptu, but effective moment as he shouted through a bullhorn on top of a pile of rubble at the World Trade Center site in September 2001.
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President GEORGE W. BUSH: I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who...
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President BUSH: ...and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.
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LIASSON: President Reagan spoke after a terrible accident, President Bush after a terrorist attack. But in 1995, President Bill Clinton faced a situation more similar to the one Barack Obama faces today: An attack on federal employees at the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City.
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President BILL CLINTON: Let us let our own children know that we will stand against the forces of fear. When there is talk of hatred, let us stand up and talk against it. When there is talk of violence, let us stand up and talk against it. In the face of death, let us honor life.
LIASSON: That's President Clinton speaking at the memorial service for the Oklahoma City victims - a speech that's widely viewed as helping him recover politically. But, says his press secretary Mike McCurry, that wasn't clear at the time.
Mr. MIKE MCCURRY (Former Press Secretary, Clinton Administration): There was some sense that that was a moment that really allowed him to say things that the whole country felt, and it was the first time since the 1994 election that he'd an opportunity to do that. So it was, in retrospect, critical, but at the moment, it was just such an awful tragedy that you didn't really stop to think about what is the impact going to be politically.
LIASSON: Of course, that's not possible anymore, says McCurry, in a time when we chew up and spit out political ramifications more quickly than we did 16 years ago. Already, people are writing about President Obama's Oklahoma City moment.
Mr. MCCURRY: The only way you get any political advantage from a terrible moment like this is by not trying to take political advantage of the moment. And you can't, I mean, because then it's just - everything looks so incredibly phony and it's done for the wrong purposes. And the only things that make these presidential moments truly powerful is when they're completely authentic.
LIASSON: At the memorial service, President Clinton didn't suggest conservative talk show hosts were in any way responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing, but he did make the connection in other remarks.
Pres. CLINTON: They spread hate. They leave the impression by their very words that violence is acceptable.
LIASSON: Today, liberal commentators wasted no time blaming the Arizona shootings on a climate of hate created by the right. And conservative voices pushed back - talk show host Rush Limbaugh accusing the media of trying to engineer an Oklahoma City bombing for President Obama. Mike McCurry says that's an area where the president should tread carefully, if at all.
Mr. MCCURRY: The conversation already beginning about the culture of discourse that we have in this country will lead in the wrong direction if it becomes the sole point of how we consider this. And I - this is really about mourning the loss of people who died. The important thing is to focus on what the country really needs. The country really needs the president to give voice to things that we all feel.
LIASSON: Yesterday at the White House, President Obama suggested he would be speaking at a memorial service in Arizona, and made it clear he understands the task before him.
President BARACK OBAMA: I think it's going to be important, I think for the country as a whole as well as the people of Arizona, to feel as if we are speaking this directly to our sense of loss, but also speaking to our hopes for the future and how, out of this tragedy, we can come together as a stronger nation.
LIASSON: A tall order even for an oratorically gifted president in today's hyperpartisan climate, where every word, phrase and gesture is dissected for its possible political consequence.
Mara Liasson, NPR News, Washington.