| Get Jonathan Bernstein's newsletter every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Did you watch President Barack Obama's speech to graduating high school seniors? It was part of a celebration broadcast through various media over the weekend. It was … adequate. He made a brief self-deprecating remark, voiced a bunch of platitudes and subtly reprimanded unnamed people in government for leaving plenty for the next generation to do. Or I suppose I could say: It was adequate! He didn't once praise himself; in fact, other than a joke about his big ears, he really didn't talk about himself at all. He didn't brag about his accomplishments. He didn't say anything false, let alone repeat any whoppers that had already been corrected multiple times; there would be no need to debate whether untrue things he said counted as lies or not. While he did say that the government could be doing better, he didn't insult anyone by name, invent any degrading nicknames or hint that his political opponents should be tossed in jail. It wasn't anything that George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford or even Richard Nixon couldn't have done. All of them, indeed, performed that task adequately or better, sometimes memorably better, countless times over their careers. It was, of course, something the current president has failed utterly to do for more than three years now: Offer adequate oratory when the occasion calls for it. Historian Micki McElya wrote a nice piece about the "conspicuous absence of any collective mourning" in the U.S. during the coronavirus pandemic and the economic collapse that has followed. She argues that it's because "We share no understanding of these staggering losses as ours, as belonging to all Americans, as national." And surely there's some truth to that, as Adam Serwer has written recently. But the president also has a role to play in national tragedies. By tradition, the commander-in-chief is also the mourner-in-chief. That, however, is part of the head-of-state role that Trump abdicated soon after taking office. He's just not willing to do that part of the job. Trump's staff has sometimes seemed to push him in this direction. But any time he's given a prepared statement with language intended to inspire or convey larger themes — it's happened several times in the past two months — he rushes through it in a mumbled monotone, perking up only when he gets to talk about how great things are going or how it's everyone else's fault that things aren't going well. He has managed to come up with a riff about how even one death is too many, but even that usually serves as an introduction to casting blame. Helping citizens mourn isn't about fault-finding. It's part of the president's job. One of the many parts that Trump has decided not to do. 1. Matthew Green at Mischiefs of Faction on public opinion and state governors. 2. Lauren Goldstein at the Monkey Cage on racial resentment and the pandemic. 3. Josh Putnam on the delegate count and when former Vice President Joe Biden will technically clinch the nomination. 4. Here at Bloomberg Opinion, Amanda Little on food security and the coronavirus. 5. Harry Enten on what the polls say about the presidential election. Worth a glance, but remember (as Enten says): It's still early, and this cycle is going to be particularly difficult to predict. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. | 
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