Two American presidents who have learned, through grueling experience, how to console a country torn by mass violence, stood at the same podium in Dallas on Tuesday.

President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush offered a study in contrasts for managing the complicated dynamics of 21st century tragedy, all with the backdrop of an overheated political season that has only inflamed tensions.


Both men acknowledged deep splits in the country and urged greater empathy as they mourned the five police officers slain in a protest last week. Bush offered a simple message meant to strike a common nerve. Obama, on the other hand, not only urged dialogue but presented both sides of it, articulating with specificity the hard truths that both sides of the debate over criminal justice reform don’t want to face.

Bush hasn’t lost the tone of moral certainty that infuriated his critics and reassured his supporters, and his clipped but artful proverbs implied the controversies of the moment without explicitly addressing them.

“Argument turns too easily into animosity. Disagreement escalates into dehumanization,” Bush said. “Too often, we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions. And this has strained our bonds of understanding and common purpose.”

Obama was much more explicit, repeatedly bringing up race and invoking the deaths not just of the five Dallas officers, but the two black men whose killings by police last week ignited fresh protests around the country.

"Faced with this violence, we wonder if the divides of race in America can ever be bridged. We wonder if an African-American community that feels unfairly targeted by police and a police department that feels unfairly maligned for doing their jobs can ever understand each other's experience,” Obama said.

Lamenting the common partisan retreat after such events, he acknowledged, "It's hard not to think sometimes that the center won't hold and things might get worse."

Obama’s message was more complicated, but so was his task. As America’s first black president in an age of data analysis and smart phones, he has sought to capitalize on the heightened awareness of the tensions between police and communities of color to drive changes.

But police unions now see in Dallas their worst fears about the impact of harsh rhetoric and distrust directed at them. The gunman, Micah Johnson, told police negotiators that he was upset about police killing blacks, and that he wanted to kill white cops.

In Dallas, Obama repeatedly invoked the names of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, the two black men killed by police officers last week in Louisiana and Minnesota, while delivering a message punctuated by both hope and self-reflective disappointment.

“Today, in this audience, I see people who have protested on behalf of criminal justice reform grieving along police officers. I see people who mourn for the five officers we lost, but also weep for the families of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. In this audience, I see what's possible," Obama said. "I see what's possible when we recognize that we are one American family, all deserving of equal treatment. All deserving equal respect. All children of God. That's the America I know."

Obama continued, "Now, I'm not naive," letting out a sigh, "I have spoken at too many memorials during the course of this presidency. I have hugged too many families who have lost a loved one to senseless violence. And I have seen how a spirit of unity from a tragedy can dissipate. Overtaken by the return of business as usual, by inertia, old habits, expediency. I see how easily we slip back into our old notions because they are comfortable, we are used to them. I have seen how inadequate words can be in bringing about lasting change. I have seen how inadequate my own words have been."

In order to properly address issues both latent and apparent, Obama remarked that Americans “are going to have to be honest with each other and ourselves.”

“We know the overwhelming majority of police officers do an incredibly hard and dangerous job fairly and professionally. They are deserving of our respect and not our scorn,” Obama said, while acknowledging that Americans “also know that centuries of racial discrimination, of slavery and segregation and Jim Crow, they didn't simply vanish with the end of lawful segregation.”

Such bias remains in the United States, and “we know it,” Obama said. “Whether you are black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or of Middle Eastern descent, we have all seen this bigotry in our own lives. We have heard it at times in our own homes.”

“If we’re honest, perhaps we have heard prejudice in our own heads and felt it in our own hearts,” Obama said.

Even while Obama lamented having to repeat lines he’s delivered at prior tragic moments, some noticed a shift in his tone.

“There was a humility in President Obama's #DallasMemorial speech that lowers barriers and invites reflection and national examination,” tweeted Patrick Gaspard, a top White House political adviser during Obama’s first term before he was appointed ambassador to South Africa.

But while some Republicans welcomed Obama’s public moment of self-reflection, they didn’t see the humility in his own rhetoric. Obama also called for more education funding and restrictions on guns – themes he frequently hits in speeches about race, criminal justice reform and mass shootings.

Obama is “very good at saying what we ought to be, but he’s not so good at representing what we ought to be in politics,” said Peter Wehner, a former Bush speechwriter now at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Other people close to the Bush family offered better reviews. Jim McGrath, spokesman for the elder former President Bush, tweeted, that Obama “gave 1 of most important speeches of his presidency today @ #DallasMemorial. Certainly 1 of the best. 43 great too.”

The key similarity, Wehner said, was the “Recognition by both of them that things were coming apart.”

“I think is an important thing to say, and presidents need to say that in moments like this,” Wehner said.

Bush also made references to race, though they were much more subtle, and, Wehner suggested, targeted at an audience that Obama hadn’t specifically addressed: Republicans. The Bush family has been vocal about their distaste for Donald Trump’s brand of politics, and the 43rd president appeared to make a plea to reject his divisive influence.

"We have never been held together by blood or background. We are bound by things of the spirit, by shared commitments to common ideals. At our best, we practice empathy, imagining ourselves in the lives and circumstances of others," Bush said.

"This is the bridge across our nation's deepest divisions. And it's not merely a matter of tolerance, but of learning from the struggles and stories of fellow citizens and finding our better selves in the process,” Bush said, later adding, “At our best, we know we have one country, one future, one destiny."

Those words, Wehner said, “were particularly appropriate for this political time and to the Republican Party where some people seem to be losing that.”

Nick Gass contributed to this report.