Ask xTian: The Speech

All day people have been coming up to me asking me the same question "xTian, President Obama's speech was not very great. I mean there was no '...but fear itself' line in there at all. What gives?"

A few immediate reactions
It is my position that history will tell us if there was a great line of any sort. It is unclear if anyone knows what they are watching when it happens. Apparently, one of the few notable exceptions was Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Of course it had the benefit of following some cornball who banged on for one hour reliving the battle and reading his "honey-do" list. By the way, I might be alone here but I've been thinking to myself that there are a lot of similarities between Lincoln and Obama. I do not understand why the media has not picked up on this more and discussed it.

There were more allusions than I knew what to do with, it was like a foreclosure sale on history (beat). What did Washington at Valley Forge have to do with anything? I guess it was cold out today...

The speech was demonstrably muted. We all know he can get a crowd to its feet. My theory is that he simply chose not to. People are using the word "sober".I think that's a good word to use especially in light of all the excess of the last 8 years. Everybody needs to sober up and go help your fellow man or something. While you're at it stop hoping some dude is going to walk in and lift your spirits every other week. He's busy trying to save the country you self involved goons.

The whole idea of "our better history" was neat. It also gave him a chance to rail on our recent history. Ronald Reagan tried to "starve the beast" and mostly succeeded. He was so successful that the next time the Democrats came in, there was no more talk of a "Great Society". All the sudden we started balancing budgets and talking about how "The Era of Big Government is over". WTF? Way to roll over Bill! Of course, if these months of bail outs and crises have shown us anything, it's that this was all hogwash. Thankfully, Barack took back the baton and reasserted the potential to do good with government. As dessert to that main course,he made sure to remind everyone that the US has a leadership role and slapped our GWB for his unilateralism and occasionally reckless foreign policy. Jimmy Carter was there to, but the President did not poke at him at all. Poor Jimmy, always getting ignored...

If there is a lesson in all this its this. Don't walk up to me in a Starbucks and ask me about stuff like this. Your coffee will get cold while you politely stand there listening to me bang on endlessly.

BTW- I am looking for a picture of George H W Bush and his wife Barbara. First off, 41 was sporting a nifty hat. He and his wife wore matching purple scarves. They looked great on TV.