After a meeting with his national security team in the wake of the Orlando shooting, President Obama addressed criticism that he has not used the term "radical Islam" when referring to the shooting. He called the criticism a "political distraction" and said, "calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away." (Reuters)

After a meeting with his national security team in the wake of the Orlando shooting, President Obama addressed criticism that he has not used the term "radical Islam" when referring to the shooting. He called the criticism a "political distraction" and said, "calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away." (Reuters)

For the eighth time during his presidency, President Obama will arrive Thursday in another grieving American city to assume the role of comforter in chief after a mass shooting, to console the victims and their families, and to offer a message of national solidarity and resilience.

The long list of gun-related attacks during his tenure — including at a military installation in Fort Hood, Tex.; an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.; and an African American church in Charleston, S.C. — has drawn the president to a somber tableau of diverse communities bound together by little more than their grief and fortitude in the face of unspeakable horrors.

A White House spokesman said Wednesday that Obama has been “personally touched” by his interactions with people in those communities and thinks that they have exhibited “courage and perseverance” and a steadfast “refusal not to be divided.” On Wednesday evening, a group of family members from Newtown, where 20 first-graders were gunned down in their classrooms in December 2012, visited the White House to view a documentary film about that tragedy.

But Obama’s visit to Orlando comes at a time when his message of embracing a common national spirit and identity above political partisanship — an idea that animated his rise to political power — could be a harder-than-ever sell amid the nasty and divisive 2016 presidential ­campaign.

The slaughter of 49 people in a gay nightclub in Orlando early Sunday has further exacerbated those political tensions, and even Obama lashed out this week at his chief detractor, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, with a withering assault on what he characterized as Trump’s demagoguery of Muslims and other groups.

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At a White House picnic for members of Congress on Tuesday evening, Obama alluded to the Orlando massacre and appealed to lawmakers to rise above ­partisanship.

“At moments like this, it’s critically important to remind ourselves what bind us together as a people — that regardless of race or ethnicity or religion or sexual orientation, we’re all Americans and we look out for each other,” Obama said. “We celebrate those things we hold dear and have in common — the love of family, the love of country. We mourn together when part of that family is hurt.”

Inside the West Wing, Obama and his top advisers have scrambled to react to the worst mass shooting in U.S. history and determine the proper role for the president. Aides said he will spend several hours in Orlando, meeting with victims, families and first responders such as medical personnel and police officers, and he will make public remarks to reporters traveling with him.

But unlike his appearances in Tucson after then-congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was wounded by a gunman in 2011, and in Charleston, where nine African Americans where killed by a white-supremacist gunman last year, Obama is not expected to participate in a large memorial service in Orlando.

Aides rejected the notion that the president’s vision of a diverse and tolerant nation unified in a time of crisis may ring hollow during this election season, which has exposed bitter, seemingly in­trac­table divisions within the American electorate. They point to an outpouring of public sympathy for the Orlando victims, many of whom were gay and Latino. Some of the families speak little or no English.

“He’s offering a message of condolence and comfort on behalf of the American people,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said. “This is a responsibility that’s all the more important when you’re talking about the way that the LGBT community in Orlando came under attack on Saturday, and signs of support and comfort from the president of the United States should be a powerful affirmation for those American citizens.”

Obama has not refrained from political combat in the wake of mass shootings. During a vigil in Newtown, Obama made clear he would move forward on a push for stricter gun control laws, an effort that fell short in Congress amid opposition from most Republicans and some Democrats.

49 people were killed at a nightclub in Orlando when a gunman who pledged loyalty to the Islamic State opened fire and took hostages. Here are the victims. (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post)

But the president also has emphasized the need for the nation to rise above political divisions even as it debated how to move forward on policies to prevent another tragedy.

“Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let’s use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy and remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together,” Obama said during the memorial service at a sports arena at the University of Arizona honoring those killed in the shooting that wounded ­Giffords.

The reality is, however, that the semi-regular cycle of mass shootings has produced what seems to be a sped-up cycle of political reaction, debate and recriminations. Obama was shocked by the reaction in Washington to the coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris last November that killed 130, accusing Trump and other Republicans of betraying American values in a rush to ban Muslim immigrants and reject refugees from war-torn Syria.

The following month, when a married couple in San Bernardino, Calif., purportedly inspired by the Islamic State, killed 14 co-workers at an office party, Obama addressed the nation in a rare prime-time Oval Office statement and attempted to calm fears with a call to ­common values.

During his second term, Obama has become very familiar with the orchestration of presidential visits to grief-stricken communities. “Unfortunately we’ve had far too much practice, but you can never prepare yourself for seeing people in the worst time of their lives,” White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said in an interview Wednesday.

Greg Jaffe contributed to this report.