What Politicians Can't Do

There are moments when politics seems a grand calling, but the eruption of evil among schoolchildren isn't one of them, and so a curious and altogether appropriate quiet settled over American politicians in the wake of the nightmare at Columbine High. Not absolute silence, mind you--there's only so much we can expect of our politicians--but quiet: a kind of humility that suggested they knew they had come up against the limits of their trade.

The response of Richard Gephardt was typical. As ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, Gephardt felt compelled to release a statement, but there was about his words something wan and attenuated. "Ultimately," he said, "the answer will not be found in state legislatures or in the halls of Congress. The answer lies somewhere in the hopelessness and the hateful hearts of the children who have lost their way." Gephardt is an activist liberal, a voluptuary of governmental solutions, so his concession carries an interesting significance. You saw it from the political right too. "There's not a magic wand you can wave," said Gary Bauer, a conservative activist who coincidentally launched his presidential campaign the day after the Littleton murders. Even Pat Buchanan, after firing off a few half-hearted rounds at the "poison of our popular culture," could offer little more than a shake of the head. "There was something sick and wrong inside those boys," he said. "I don't know how to stop it."

As always, it was President Clinton, the most finely tuned politician of the age and the bully pulpit's current occupant, who best captured the prevailing political tone. From global warming to lagging test scores, from car safety seats to unmet alimony payments, the President is quick to launch a program for any problem, no matter how obscure, with three points or five points or seven--the more points the better. And, yes, he did urge school boards to apply for federal grants that would put armed police officers in schools. But in the face of the carnage, he mostly dropped the wonkery and assumed the role of National Grief Counselor. "It is very important to explain to children, all over America, what has happened," he said, "and to reassure our own children that they are safe." If anyone thought it odd that the government's chief executive officer was advising parents on what to whisper to their children as they tucked them in at night, nobody said so. Under the circumstances, the President's words seemed tasteful and well chosen.

This is something new in American politics, but it didn't start with Littleton. It has been in train for many months or maybe longer, and it crosses party lines. A bipartisan consensus--that holy grail of establishmentarians everywhere--has been reached that politicians can no longer concern themselves merely, even primarily, with the workaday stuff of politics: marginal tax rates, crime control, defense expenditures, environmental and labor laws, the international balance of power. Our politicians are transcending politics. They are turning their attention, for better or for worse, to matters of the human heart.