WASHINGTON— For President Barack Obama, the decision to return early from an overseas trip after a series of shocking shootings will prove to be easy compared to his next challenge: Comforting an America that has witnessed a rash of shootings.
After arriving from Spain late Sunday, Obama will fly Tuesday to Dallas, the scene of the massacre of police officers that, on the heels of two caught-on-video police shootings, has emerged as a tipping point in the national debate about race and justice. Obama is due to deliver remarks at an interfaith memorial service and is expected to meet with victims’ families and with local law enforcement officials mourning their own.
To some degree, the trip is a familiar ritual for a president who has embarked in recent years on similar consolation missions with relentless frequency. But it’s clear that Obama views the moment as distinct. In choosing to the deliver a speech, rather than a private visit with families, Obama has tasked himself with ministering to Americans as they make sense of a frustrating cloud of issues swirling around the shootings.
The president sees delivering this sort of guidance a core part of his leadership, so much so that some of his memorable speeches were in honor of mass shooting victims, including his challenge to protect children from guns in Newtown, Conn. — “We’re not doing enough.” — and his singing of “Amazing Grace” after the shooting in a black church in Charleston, S.C.
But it’s far from clear whether these moments fostered movement — either on legislation or race relations — and Obama has had to face the limits of his rhetoric. As he has in the past, Obama will search this week for a way to break through.
