https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2010/04/remembering_oklahoma_city_and.html
"Indeed we do. But few analysts have ever acknowledged that Clinton himself was resurrected by the bombing. That McVeigh murdered 168 Americans is only part of his legacy: He also detonated his own fringe, and the aftermath of Oklahoma City should stand as a lesson to politicians on both sides of the aisle.
Exactly 15 years ago yesterday, then-President Clinton was forced to declare at a press conference, “I’m relevant. The Constitution gives me relevance.” Health-care reform was dead, and Hillary Clinton seemed discredited. Both houses of Congress had gone Republican, and the GOP was rolling out its legislative plans.
The next morning, the Oklahoma City Federal Building exploded. Pundits would go on to write that it was the government shutdown later that year that allowed Clinton to trump the Republicans, but it was actually Oklahoma City that first allowed him to step forward as a national leader. As speechwriter Michael Waldman wrote in his book POTUS Speaks: “It was the nation’s first exposure to Clinton as mourner in chief … In fact, it was the first time Clinton had been a reassuring figure rather than an unsettling one.”