The Politics of Arizona's Great Divide

TIME: Arizona and its most watched-over daughter, Gabby Giffords, easily had the largest presence at the State of the Union address. It wasn't just the empty chair; it was the entire intramural seating chart. The short, subdued ovations. The lack of score settling in the speech or outbursts from the gallery. Even Representative Michele Bachmann, in her Tea Party retort to President Obama's speech, failed to leap off her usual rhetorical cliffs. A vow to "proclaim liberty throughout the land" was as close as she came. Other Arizonans were in attendance as Michelle Obama's guests. Some had been at the First Lady's side in Tucson a few weeks earlier, like the family of the little girl who was murdered in the Jan. 8 shooting spree and the young (and gay and Hispanic) hero of that chaotic crime scene. But there was a new face of Arizonan compassion as well: Diego Vasquez, an aspiring aerospace engineer from Laveen who helped design an award-winning wheelchair after seeing a disabled friend struggle in school. Giffords watched all of this from her hospital bed in Houston, and one wonders whether she was able to appreciate the irony that this bipartisan restraint — no matter how fleeting — should be inspired by Arizona, a state whose politics are, well, unrestrained. Arizona seems to have adopted a role as the fingernails on the chalkboard of American politics: screeching, cringe-inducing, impossible to ignore. And whatever the amount of comity that hit Congress on the night of Jan. 25, Arizona is going to need much more of it.