The Right Side Of The Blogosphere’s Reaction To Obama’s Speech

When even MSNBC doesn’t have a lot of good things to say about an Obama speech, you can be sure that conservatives are going to be SCATHING. So, let me give you my reaction to last night’s speech and then I’ll include some of the more notable reactions from the Rightroots to what Obama had to say last night.

Summary: I think Obama started out doing what he needed to do. He talked about the disaster and what the government had been doing. He did show they were doing something, but should have focused a lot more on that. How did this go so wrong? That was what people wanted to hear: How are we going to “plug the damn hole.”

Then he went on to the plans and commissions and things they’ll do one day….we were getting cloudier there. Why haven’t we planned more of this out already?

Towards the end, he pushed the exact same bill he’s been behind since he got into office. It seemed disingenuous and when he tried to move to uplifting rhetoric, it had the same problem he’s had all along: He knows the notes, but not the tune. He was saying passionate words with no passion.

C -: Obama may get a small temporary bump, but that’s it. Not a particularly good speech.

As you’ll soon see, that reaction may qualify as “kind” compared to what some of the other bloggers said.

This is such embarrassing cliché rhetoric: Some say we can’t do it. I say we can’t not do it.

…He cites a bunch of modest ideas that have been suggested and says we should think about them, then says that we have to do something, even though you could take all those things together, impose them, and still not break what he calls our “addiction” to fossil fuel. He blathers about WWII and the moon landing — as noted above — and talks about “what has defined us as a nation”: “the capacity to shape our destiny…. Even if we’re unsure exactly what that looks like. Even if we don’t yet know precisely how we’re going to get there. We know we’ll get there.” That is so hopelessly grandiose and vague, and to keep us from looking at it too long and despairing, he’s all: Look! Shrimp! — Althouse

If there is anything worse for a leader than rhetorical impotence, I don’t know what it is. Even a sex scandal implies some sort of virility. But empty words?

Imagine you’re at the grocery store and you see that mom screeching at her child. The mother rages, the child continues his marauding ways. The other children yawn. Mom lost it a long time ago. Friends roll their eyes. No one takes her seriously because she’s in over her head.

President Obama is wearing the Mom Jeans in more ways than one. — Melissa Clouthier

The spill in the gulf will eventually be capped. Here’s hoping that — and an effective cleanup — happens sooner rather than later. What will linger long after the last oil ball washes ashore on a sandy beach in Florida or Louisiana is the memory that President Obama, the great avatar of Hope & Change, was slow in responding and weak on details when he finally did. And that his vision on this topic, like all others, consists of soaring platitudes and cliches that, like Icarus’ wings, just aren’t up to the blazing-hot sun of everyday reality and the catastrophes that come one after another. — Nick Gillespie

Obama’s Gulf Speech – The Day After In One Sentence…”So that’s what it’s like to play President.” — William Jacobson

My general sense of the matter is that there was really very little Obama could have said at this point that would have satisfied anyone. We’re already 57 days into this mess and he’s been talking about it non-stop. Absent some surprise announcement that he’s been working with James Carville and come up with an instant solution, he wasn’t going to give us anything new of significance.

Even with those very low expectations, though, this was a shockingly underwhelming speech. The few sound bytes I heard on NPR this morning were exceedingly weak, even by George W. Bush standards. Moreover, even those on the president’s side were disappointed if not outright angry.

My initial thoughts when I was reading some of the “leaked” previews yesterday were that it sounded like a speech Jimmy Carter would have given. — James Joyner

Obama’s speech: There’s a pipe spewing a gazillion gobs of oil into the gulf, so let’s build more windmills. — Andrew Malcolm

This speech was suited for Day 1 of a catastrophe, not Day 57. It had no answers at all. None. It’s as if Rip van Obama awoke after eight weeks of slumber and had been told just that morning about a massive problem in the Gulf of Mexico. For a man who has repeatedly claimed to be “fully engaged since Day 1,” and who repeated that claim last night, Obama gave every impression of still being in the spitballing stage of crisis management. — Ed Morrissey

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