Oklahoma Bombing Could Trigger Fundamental Shift In U.S. Politics

Because politics are, thank goodness, subordinate to other aspects of American life, the forces that change our politics usually arise from events in the outside world - not from government itself.

My hunch is that the Oklahoma City bombing may trigger the next fundamental shift in politics.

If you want examples of what I mean, two come readily to mind: Runaway inflation in the late 1970s shook Americans’ confidence and made them feel they had become prey to an uncontrollable, malignant force. When the hostage crisis in the U.S. Embassy in Iran went on and on, adding to that sense of national impotence, the stage was set for three straight Republican presidential victories.

Earlier, the Vietnam War had poisoned the political atmosphere, and when, in 1967-68, it was accompanied by urban riots and violent anti-war demonstrations, the sense of national unraveling ended the Democrats’ dominance of the White House.

In comparison, the purely political events that shook other presidencies turned out to have only short-term effects. Watergate and Gerald R. Ford’s pardon of Richard M. Nixon gave Jimmy Carter just one term. The fiascos of George Bush’s 1990 budget deal and Bill Clinton’s health plan may prove equally fleeting in the power shifts they produced.

At this point, we can only speculate about what Oklahoma City and the specter of extremist domestic terrorism may do, but some reactions have surfaced strongly:

An instinctive focus on children, family and community.

What made this assault so especially horrible was the slaughter of the innocents in a day-care center. From now on, those who speak of this generation’s obligations to nurture, care for and educate its children - and spare them the burden of our burgeoning debts - likely will find that their message resonates.

“Family values” have been a conservative trademark in recent years, but this tragedy puts “family” into a different context, emphasizing not the separateness and autonomy of each set of parents, but, rather, our mutual obligations. What most Americans have felt, I suspect, is what former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo expressed when he said, “We are all one family.”

A demonstration of the positive value of government.

Americans have felt instinctive sympathy for the government workers who were the victims of this attack and have felt great pride in the courage shown by the survivors and the policemen and firemen who assisted in the rescue efforts, as well as admiration for the remarkable skill of lawenforcement agencies in tracking the suspects.

It has reminded us that government is not always “the problem” but can be, literally, a lifesaver in time of need.

This is particularly important at a moment when the Republicans’ “Contract With America” has placed the size and scope of government on the agenda for debate. As the head of government, President Clinton benefits from the rehabilitation of its reputation for effectiveness. As head of state, he also has earned deserved praise for the way he has led the nation though a period of anxiety, anger and mourning.

A revulsion to extremist rhetoric.

The increasing venom of the political debate has been decried often but ineffectually in this column and in many other places. But the bombing shows how dangerous it really is to inflame twisted minds with statements that suggest that political opponents are enemies. For two years, Rush Limbaugh has described this nation as “America held hostage” to the policies of liberal Democrats, as if the duly elected president and Congress were equivalent to the regime in Tehran.

I think there will be less tolerance and fewer cheers for that kind of rhetoric.

A taint on vigilante groups who stockpile weapons and organize against the claimed threat that America is being sold out to sinister international forces.

I want to choose my words carefully. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., was rightly resentful of questions suggesting that his calls for a “revolution” against “the corrupt liberal welfare state” could have incited this bombing. It is, as he said, “grotesque” to think that he has any such responsibility.

But conservatives who fight against the assault-weapons ban and raise the false charge that the United Nations is usurping control of U.S. military forces now face the same problem that liberal opponents of the Vietnam War faced when radical anti-war groups started blowing up campus laboratories, imprisoning college presidents and throwing excrement on the steps of the Pentagon.

The American people are not extremists, and they are not comfortable with movements that they can link to violent actions like this awful event in Oklahoma City.