Obama at the Big Murky

President Obama finally gave a speech that was panned by virtually every beltway pundit. His 17 minute speech from the Oval Office on the BP oil disaster was seen as not Big enough and didn't call for an Apollo-type response to our energy needs. Chris Matthews, who has turned against Obama, felt that he should have called for schoolchildren to "volunteer" their summers to clean up the mess. Former Bush speechwriter Gerson lamented the use of such an august setting for such a mundane series of policy proposals. Remember his boss said that the purpose of America was to "eliminate evil" on this planet. That's thinking big. The Left seems to have abandoned Obama while the Right believes that, ready for this, government regulations were the fault of the BP disaster. We even had Sarah Palin's immediate tweet that Obama was playing into the hands of Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

For these situations, I recommend watching an Obama speech on C-Span, without the self-aggrandizing talking heads. The call-in response to the speech from average Americans--pro and anti-Obama--was uniformally enthusiastic and supportive of the President. By this morning NPR was flooded with e-mails from around the country, which criticized all the naysayers by challenging them to come up with constructive answers to the spill. The general theme from the NPR listeners was that Obama didn't cause the spill, BP did and what is it precisely you think he should do that he's not doing.

While I love Obama at his rhetorical best, last night's speech was succinct, plain-spoken and fact-based ( a rarity in Washington these days). He may have gone too religious for me but he was trying to communicate to the average American without the filters of the press. It seemed to me that the speech worked in ways that those I love have not. While I found his suggestions about an energy bill too vague and not time specific, he would have lost his intended audience if he went into the type of detail he did in his MIT speech. I just fear that his generalized desire for an energy bill will end up with the nonsense we saw on the health reform debate. To invite conservative reaction, I found the speech Reaganesque and probably as effective.

Conservative invocations of the sanctity of the oval office strike me as offensive. The Right worships ritual and patriotic symbols. Remember the flap over Obama's lack of a flag pin or his not saluting the flag. Obama puts his feet up on the desk in the Oval Office. He bows to foreign leaders. Not like say Junior who French-kissed the Saudi King. Conservatives are the only patriots, even though for the last year and a half they have supported sedition. As Lee Atwater used to say,"Put out alot of flags, say the pledge of allegiance, sing the national anthem, and you can say anything you want." That's a formula that still works.

I'm beginning to worry about the American Left. We're hearing everything from nationalize the oil companies to the federal government must seize control of the entire Gulf State. Bill Maher has decided Obama is not his guy and says that he should just tell people who work in the industry--Screw You. Since we only have one mature adult in Washington, it seems to me the Left shouldn 't abandon ship when anarcho-fascists wait in the wings.