Bringing out the best in us (updated)

The NYT quotes Obama thus: “We need a president who stops using 9/11 as a way to scare up votes and uses it as a way to bring out the best in us.”

And, er, how exactly does he propose to use 9/11 to bring out the best in us?

(Update: there have been several suggestions in comments as to what Obama might have meant, but they amount to guesses, attempts by my typically high-minded commenters to superimpose their own ideals on Obama’s nebulous rhetoric. Arguably, this is the appeal of Obama in a nutshell. The focus of this election on “electability” seems to have found its natural apotheosis: a good campaigner whose campaigning skills tell us absolutely nothing about how he’d govern.)