WASHINGTON - The disaster befalling the space shuttle Saturday happened above an already anxious nation with mounting worries over economic troubles and a possible war.
Now add grieving and second-guessing.
The shock of Columbia’s explosion over Texas was received initially with grim resolve. Images of the country coping with the 1986 Challenger disaster were played over and over on television, which becomes the national hearth at moments like these.
President Bush vowed that the United States would continue to be “led into the darkness beyond our world by the inspiration of discovery and the longing to understand.”
Saturday, Bush was transformed from commander in chief to comforter in chief, a role he has not much played since the darkest days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“Our journey into space will go on,” Bush vowed in a three-minute speech from the White House. “In the skies today, we saw destruction and tragedy, yet farther than we can see there is comfort and hope.”
His voice barely above a whisper at points, Bush lauded the seven dead Columbia astronauts for willingly meeting risks “in the service to all humanity.’’
His reference to all humanity seemed incongruous with the recent course of human events. Just Tuesday, Bush had given a tough speech threatening war with Iraq after describing a chilling catalog of Saddam Hussein’s alleged stockpile of weapons.
As a sign of the times, some of the first questions about the space shuttle’s destruction had to do with terrorism, even though there were no hints that terrorism had anything to do with it.
Some noted that, at a time of high tensions in the Middle East, how ironic it was that debris from a shuttle carrying an Israeli astronaut was spread over a town called Palestine, Texas.
A day before the Columbia accident, alluding to Iraq and terrorism and the economy, Vice President Dick Cheney warned of the many challenges facing the country.
“We have many responsibilities,” he said, “and we do not have the luxury of taking them on one at a time.”
With U.S. forces amassing in the Middle East, a nuclear standoff with North Korea escalating, and the threat of terror persisting, America’s mood has been of monumental events rushing toward unknown endings.
A new poll released Friday by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press said that public confidence in the nation’s course had dipped to its lowest level of Bush’s presidency. Only 34 percent said they thought the country was moving in the right direction; a year ago, 50 percent said so.
After the last shuttle disaster in 1986, then-President Reagan used the mourning period to reassure Americans that the space program - and by extension, confidence in America - would not die. Reagan gave one of the most notable speeches of his public life when he described the seven dead Challenger astronauts as pioneers who had “slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God.”
Reagan helped rally the country out of sorrow and self-doubt. By that summer, polls were showing confidence in the country - and Reagan - on the upswing.
Will that rally-around-the-flag effect take hold again? Or will the disaster only add to the doubts and anxieties already in the air?
Ron Dittemore, NASA’s shuttle program manager,
declared which direction he will go.
“We are going to fix this problem,” he said. “We are going
to get back on the launch pad.”