Rick "The Speech Was a Living Organism" Klein: Obama Deliberately Tanked His Speech Because a Bad Speech Brings The Actual Choices Into Such Sharper Focus

Oh. My. Wow.

speech is Obama rising above - disdaining the process - and trying to make the choices bigger, not smaller. #DNC2012

See, when I made this sandwich for you, I went out to the yard and got some dried up old dogshit and cut the dogshit into slices, like deli meat.

And the reason I did that? I wanted you to really savor this new orange-flavored soda. It really has a invigorating kick to it, doesn't it?

F***ing hysterical. Oh, my goodness, I'm not sure if I really want the media to stop being such liberal shills. It's so funny. What would we do without them?

Lots of other liberals get the word from Team Obama that he had all sorts of Good Tactical Reasons to give a bad speech (euphemized as a "sober" or "subdued" speech), they begin echoing it and praising Dear Leader for his wisdom.

Meanwhile, people who aren't stupid shills disagree.

For years, complaints that President Obama is a failure have been met with reminders that he is an inspiring man who can make a damn good speech, and requests for patience. Worry not about the unemployment numbers, we have been assured, for he is just about to revive the economy — this summer, or next summer, or maybe the one after that . . . Whether with Obamacare, the unemployment figures, or the stimulus, the president always seems to be just one pivotal oration away from convincing the electorate that his policies are attractive to them. He shares the conceit: When asked what his biggest mistake was, he answered that he had not communicated well enough.

There is a teeny-tiny problem with this: It’s not true. Barack Obama can make precisely one speech, and he has been making it for years now. He can make a speech in which — playing the youthful and exuberant outsider — he asks to be elected president in order to fix America’s problems — problems that have ostensibly been caused by a combination of minarchist Republicans, ubiquitous straw men, and the cynical nature of a politics that he somehow transcends. So well practiced is this speech that at the beginning of every sentence last night, those who follow such things knew precisely what was coming next, cadence and volume changes included.

And stage whispers. Don't forget the stage whispers. I know that "volume changes" references this but please don't forget the fakey stage whispers.

Jay Cost wonders where the post-partisan spirit went.

This is one of the great ironies of the Obama administration. He promised to unite us around common themes and values that we all share, but by connecting them so directly to his controversial agenda, he has time and again divided us. He has a Manichean view of American politics – he and his allies embody all of the goodness and light that America represents and his opponents represent nothing but the darkness.

There has been a growing polarization in this country over the last few decades that moves beyond matters of simple partisan support. Increasingly, it seems, one side of this great divide views the other side as somehow illegitimate. No leader since at least Richard Nixon has done more to exacerbate this dangerous tension. By inevitably redrafting shared values as Democratic ones, he feeds the impulse on the left that the right is un-American, he infuriates the right for what are vicious insults, and he leaves those in the middle of the country scratching their heads.

He is the most partisan president in generations.

Tony Harnden canvasses reactions, and finds almost all people not named "Howard Finemann" and "Rick Klein" thought the speech was flat at best and vapid and dishonest at worst.

By the way, Joe Biden wants to remind you that a President has one job above all others:

That's Ben Howe's work there.

posted by Ace at 04:30 PM

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