He’s certainly a master at getting the tone of an anticipated speech just right. He proved that for the first time, for me, with the ‘Jeremiah Wright / Racism in America‘ speech where he effectively re-established his command of the campaign and the tangent issues.
He did it again tonight. He made it clear that America was angry with him, and he accepted that fact, and then he made it clear that both he
and America were merely doing their jobs.
He said this year was the one to focus on jobs and to attack deficits, both of which everyone wanted to hear. He did not back down on healthcare reform, which he badly needed to make clear. He made a case for that being critically necessary whether politicians now have the courage to finish off the package or not. And reform’s the best way to address deficits, and he’s right.
It was very well done. I think he’s again seized the narrative, but that will only last for a couple of weeks.
I got a real sinking sense tonight of Obama’s being wholly but an American patrician. Intellectual and philosophical, he’s remarkably capable of measuring the buffeting political choruses with great accuracy and then invoking a call for a comprehensive plebeian answer grounded in sensible activism and incisive real-world experience. Really amazing, honestly.
Really empty, too. The one endeavor in his entire political life where that call showed up in reality and flesh is healthcare reform. All he’s done tonight is say that he’s still behind it. If he were really serious about it, he’d have been doing the dirty work of nastily twisting House Democrats’ arms this week. Instead, he’s spent all of his time thinking and pondering and balancing and crafting a terrific-sounding speech. Quite the Roman Senator.
He’s spent all his life parsing these issues. But he hasn’t figured out how to move people to do his considerably sensible will, other than to mull and draft another inspiring speech. Do you think that if the mob continue to ignore him, which they’ll surely do, he’ll just throw up his arms in exasperation? I do.
It certainly was a bombshell, so the reactions are coming fast and furious. And many righties do not like what Sarah Palin did. They immediately thought that, by giving up on the Governorship so quickly, long before the first term was up, she had abandoned Alaska for personal reasons, and it understandably would not sit well with Alaskans or Americans. And lord knows Conservatives are long on loyalty, so if they’re throwing her overboard only hours later, it can’t be good.
co-host Duane Patterson. I’ve had a chance to watch the video of her announcement and read through dozens of Twitter messages back and forth attempting to rationalize this, and still, it simply can’t be rationalized on the basis of what Palin said today. It’s easily the most bizarre resignation I’ve seen, and just about senseless.