Obama on the Hill

After several years a President suddenly emerged on the Hill to deliver a speech without smirks and invocating strange demons we should fear. The vanguished rival John McCain looked wistful the whole proceedings. MSNBC rigged up those reaction lines to measure the support of Obama and McCain supporters to the speech. On several occasions the McCain group surpassed the Obama people in support. CNN's poll afterward showed all of 8% of viewers had a negative view of the speech. But this is cheating, over 77% of voters felt Obama would give a bravura speech before the night began.

It makes you wonder what would happen if Obama actually blew a major speech.

Our own Department of Inland Security hailed Obama's call to go after tax havens as we suggested in previous blogs. Today's press reports American fatcats are suing UBS in switzerland not to reveal their names.

Now about Bobby Jindal. Michael Steele spent the time prior to the speech raving how Jindal's speech was the perfect antidote to Obama and that he already had seen the speech. After last night, reporters tracked him down and he commented," It was OK. But I only heard it on radio." I guess this wasn't Steele's Hip-Hop moment.

NYT conservative op-ed writer Doug Brooks called Jindal's speech the worst in the history of democracy sincle Pericles' time. I strenuously object to this--John McCain's Lime Jello speech was the worst in the history of politics, not only just democracy. But Jindal certainly was creepy. he came across as a Hindu Nixon. I'm surpised he didn't say, "No one will write a book about my mother."

Little Bill Kristol had a clever take on the Obama speech. He ignored the fact that Iceland melted, New Zealand will be rationing food in a month, Eastern Europe is collapsing and Annie Liebovitz just pawned her life's work so she can meet her mortgage payment and simply focused on war--allegedly the lack of mention in Obama's speech. Kristol complained that the short mentions of Iraq and Afghanistan show that this is a President that doesn't expect to use military force within the next two years. What's wrong with this picture?

Larry Sabato was charitable saying that following any President is tough and the response usually doesn't deliver. In this case, he said, Jindal didn't deliver at all.

Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson waxed poetic about Jindal's background, which is another way to avoid the issue.

For his part, Obama emerged at least on the scale of Reagan in his heyday and possibly FDR. For this reason, the Republicans are shell-shocked. They haven't moved on to scared to death.

During the week here in Washington,a Republican Governor walked through who actually sounded sensible. Utah's Jon Huntsman was interviewed about Republican Governors against the stimulus package. He admitted the "Republicans are so back on their heels, they don't know what they're doing. We have no ideas left. I just ignore all of the Republican congresspeople."

Bobby Jindal's home-written speech hit some truly absurdist notes. One that escapes people is his complaint that the stimulus bill has money for "volcano monitoring" in it. With an Alaskan volcano about to erupt and having been the victim of a natural catastrophe in Katrina,this is truly odd. But it does pander to the anti-science base in the party. The other major snafu was talking about Katrina as evidence that the government can't do anything well. Was this a slam at W or just the crazed imaginings of an exorcist? He told the story about a sheriff,who is known for racial profiling,complaining about the government interfering with rescue boats. One thing that actually was superb was the Coast Guard helicopter rescues of people in new Orleans. Lastly, the idea of any Louisiana Governor talking about federal aid, which the state receives in bucketfuls, is amazing.

The same day as Obama's speech the renegade Republican Governors--Sanford, Barbour, Riley and Jindal--learned the hard truth--you accept the whole package, including the unemployment benefits or nothing at all.