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Non-SOTU Reax
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan —
Will Wilkinson:
Oratorywise, so good. Ideawise, so weak. Combination, so dangerous. Nate Silver: If it sounds like Jindal is targeting his speech to a room full of
fourth graders, that's because he is. They might be the next people to
actually vote for Republicans again. Josh Marshall: Did I get my sections mixed up or did most of the GOP legislators hop to their feet when Obama said "We do not torture"? That's a major policy switch. Russell Roberts: ...
A pre-emptive rebuttal
Political Animal —
A PRE-EMPTIVE REBUTTAL.... One of the things I've always liked about Barack Obama speeches is that he refuses to talk down to the public. As Ezra Klein, reflecting on last night's speech, noted that the address "was an explanation. The president told us what he was planning to do. And the speech was written as if he believed that we could understand him." Quite right. The president also seemed conscious, though, of the idea that there are some in our public discourse that may sow the seeds of confusion, and treat voters in a less respectful way. Earlier this week, speaking to ...
Post-game analysis: Obama’s Joint Session speech
pandagon.net - we are the public option —
by Amanda Marcotte
I have to disagree with one small thing about Ezra’s otherwise excellent post---I think Obama’s speech last night was incredibly inspiring. Since Reagan especially, Americans have been conditioned to think “inspiring” looks like empty but well-spoken platitudes, but history actually shows that the greatest speeches are the ones made during hard times, to buck people up for the fight ahead. Sure, the media will try to handicap Obama by comparing him to Reagan and suggesting that he would have been better to just lie to people about the state of the economy, because that’s more “inspiring”, but I prefer the ...
