Excerpt
President Obama is not known for showing a surplus of emotion in public, but toward the end of his speech at the University of Arizona, he paused for 51 seconds and appeared to gather himself.
The audience was on its feet. Mr. Obama had just laid down a stark and powerful gauntlet, challenging the country to live up to the expectations of 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green, whose death on Saturday was an emotional punch to the gut for so many people across the country. Among them, apparently, is the president himself, whose younger daughter, Sasha, was born three months before Christina.
“I want our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it,” Mr. Obama had just said. “All of us — we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations.”
And then he stopped. After 10 seconds, he looked to his right. After 20 seconds, he took a deep breath. After 30 seconds, he started blinking. Then his jaw tightened. Finally, after 51 seconds of silence, he began to speak again, describing a book published after Sept. 11, 2001 — the day Christina was born — that included her picture and included simple wishes for a child’s life, including one inscription that read “I hope you jump in rain puddles.”
It was a stark moment for Mr. Obama, both as a president and as a father. This is a man who introduced himself to the nation with a memoir that explored how he was shaped by the absence of his own father, and it has been clear that he takes his role as a parent seriously.
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