His speech yesterday attempted to do just that, and he is justly entitled to praise for it. I am grateful that he rose to the occasion to deliver the kind of oratory that the occasion merited -- let us hope that he heeds his own, beautifully written and delivered words.
I do wonder, however, why it took so long for the President to make that call. We were treated to four days -- Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and most of Wednesday -- of ugly rhetoric and vituperation from the left, while The White House remained silent.
It's not clear to me whether this was (1) simple mismanagement; (2) an effort to make sure the anti-conservative message got wide play before attempting to appear "above it all"; or (3) waiting for polling data to learn what tack would resonate with the greatest number of Americans.
I don't mean to nitpick, but you can be darn sure that if national dialogue had been heading in some direction that the President clearly opposed -- as, say, in the Hasan shootings -- it wouldn't have taken him four days to make some effort to shut it down.