Is it just me who is constantly amazed that this guy is considered a marvelous and inspiring orator? He sounds more like some college lecturer forced to speak on a distasteful topic of little or no personal interest simply because it is part of the course outline. Whatever happened to projecting a little "hope" --not to mention inspiring the troops and the rest of us about our mission? I give it a D- effort at best; and he didn't fail completely only because he at least got the fundamental idea right, though not much else with his multiple contradictions and unemotional and flat delivery.
Oh, and what was with the constant slapping the podium with every verbal point? In the deafening silence being made by the audience, each time he did it, it only emphasized the silence and was very distracting.
On the whole, I agree with Victor Davis Hanson:
That was such a strange speech. Deploring partisanship while serially trashing Bush at each new talking point. Sending more troops, but talking more about when they will come home rather than what they will do to the enemy. There was nothing much new in the speech, yet apparently it took the president months to decide whether even to give it.
Ostensibly the talk was to be on Afghanistan; instead, the second half mostly consisted of the usual hope-and-change platitudes.
Still, the president, to his credit, is trying to give the best picture of the Afghanistan war. Obama started well in his review of why George Bush removed the Taliban. But that disinterested narrative lasted about two minutes. Then came the typical Obama talking points that characterize his reset-button foreign policy and don't offer a high degree of confidence that our commander in chief wants to defeat the enemy or believes that he can win the war....
Personally, I don't believe he cares much either way about Afghanistan until he can determine how much it will help or hurt him to either lose or win there. When you understand that it's all about Obama all the time, then the strangeness becomes more understandable: he's got to be able to say everything that everybody wants to hear, no matter how contradictory it may sound.
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On another note, from now till January sometime, blogging will be very intermittant to non-existent. The movers come in 2 weeks and I'll be making the trek from Ann Arbor to Fresno before Christmas.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS and MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL !
