EXPLICIT RESPONSIBILITY WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER:

Obama's powerful Tucson omission (Jonathan Capehart, 1/14/11, Washington Post)

The prepared text read:

I want us to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it. All of us - we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children's expectations.

But when it came to deliver the lines, Obama -- in either a rhetorical slip or a deliberate omission -- dropped the "us" in that first line. "I want to live up to her expectations," the president said.

For the first time in an address that soared at 30,000 feet, Obama came down to earth. Through a simple line, Obama powerfully and personally embraced his own demand of Americans. "All of us," he went on to say, "we should do everything we can do to make sure this country lives up to our children's expectations." It was as if he were implicitly taking responsibility for whatever role he played in the nation's toxic political discourse. After a tragedy such as Tucson, that's what leaders do.