Last night in his first Oval Office Address, Barack Obama finally managed to fulfill his campaign promise of bringing Washington to bipartisan agreement. It was nearly unanimous. He stunk up the joint.
When you have Keith Olberman and Chris Matthews, Barack’s backside-blessing buddies at MSNBC saying things like “It was a great speech if you were on another planet for the last 57 days” and “I don’t sense executive command,” you know the bloom is off the Rose Garden.
Wishy-washy Obama missed an opportunity
Americans can feel robber barons making off with the country, but the president failed to tell it like it is
Robert Reich, Salon
I’m a fan of Barack Obama. I campaigned for him and I believe in him. I think he has a first-class temperament. I have been deeply moved and startled by his ability to speak about the nation’s most intractable problems. But he failed tonight to rise to the occasion. Is it because he’s not getting good advice, or because he’s psychologically incapable of expressing the moral outrage the nation feels?
Can The One Drop the Buzzer-Beating No. 23 Act
Maureen Dowd, The New York Times
You know the president is drowning — in oil this time — when he uses the Oval Office. And do words really matter when the picture of oil gushing out of the well continues to fill the screen?
BP—Blah Performance
Daniel Gross, Newsweek
But those who expected Obama to go Jack Welch on BP came away disappointed. My guess is that the speech, far from sending BP’s stock into a new downward spiral, will turn out to be something of a non-event.
Obama’s Speech: An Enormous Wasted Opportunity Andrew Winston, Huffington Post
What’s scary about the speech tonight is that it almost could’ve been any president in the last four decades. They’ve all sat in the Oval Office and said ‘never again’ and ‘we’re going to find a new energy future.’ And yet, here we are, using more fossil fuels than ever.
See also
EDITORIAL: Obama running on empty
The president’s energy speech was fueled by hot air
The Washington Times
The president stated that the future of unlimited clean energy had been denied to Americans through a cabal of “oil industry lobbyists” and politicians lacking “courage and candor.” But don’t worry, the O Force is determined to focus the efforts of government on the problem, defeat these conspiratorial forces and save the country. There are only two things wrong with this idea: It isn’t true, and it won’t work.
The Speech
Rich Galen, TownHall.com
The White House wanted to use this speech to have the American people view the President’s handling of the Gulf oil spill in a new light. If there was any light at all, it was very, very dim.
