Written By : John Hawkins

All in all, the only person on the Right that I found who seemed to like the speech was Bill Kristol — and he didn’t exactly heap rainbows, faeries, and fluffy unicorn bellyscratches on it either. That being said, it’s also worth noting that while the reviews were almost universally negative, they weren’t all that scathing either.

Obama’s Speech: Now Is The Time We Must Honor Our Returning Troops By Transforming The Country Into Something They Wouldn’t Recognize And Don’t Want. — Ace, Ace of Spades HQ

Aside from the wooden performance, there was nothing particularly noteworthy about President Barack Obama’s Oval Office address on Iraq last night. The President again evinced the impression that he viewed Iraq as a distraction, and he twice said he wanted to “turn the page” to other issues. — Conn Carroll, Conn Carroll, The Foundry

My thoughts on the speech? Petty, small, graceless, and ultimately irrelevant. The American people know what’s up in Iraq. This speech wasn’t for them. It was for the Democrat base that needed to hear the words “a promise kept”. The speech was a bone to the lapdogs.

The American people also know that troops will never leave Iraq–just as they’re still in Korea, Japan, Germany and elsewhere. American troops will stay there to protect the fragile country and to serve as a bulwark against Iran. It is also a nice, centrally located base.

So, the speech was one of those things politicians do. And it wasn’t even a good bit of politicking at that. — Melissa Clouthier, Right Wing News

Barack Obama again waited for Rush Limbaugh to go on vacation before addressing the public from the Oval Office. Like the last speech, this speech was, for three-quarters of it, dry and monotone — President Spock addressing the nation without emotion.

Finally, at the end, Spockobama gave into emotion and showed some talking about the troops.

Throughout though, the speech was a rather pathetic speech.

…In short, it was a pathetic mashup of schizophrenic campaign themes built up as an “Iraq speech” so the networks would carry it in full. The speech could be boiled down to “I love the troops. Cough. Iraq. Cough. Jobs, jobs, jobs. Hey, let’s go spend some more money!!!! Cough. Iraq. Cough. — Erick Erickson, Redstate

I really disliked it. Maybe I’m letting other factors poison my take, and I should probably sleep on it before rendering final judgment. But here are a few things that really stuck in my craw.

…If you read this closely, what Obama is saying is that not only do we owe it to the troops to rally around his discredited and partisan economic agenda (“It’s our turn”), not only is it a test of our patriotism to sign on with his environmental and industrial planning schemes, but that doing so “must be our central mission as a people.”

I find everything about that offensive. — Jonah Goldberg, The Corner

Why is it that this guy always sounds like a bloodless muppet when he’s discussing things that would move a normal human being? Obama’s supposed to be this great speaker, but here he was discussing what may very well be a pivotal moment of history, and he was plain old dull.

Speech Grade: D+. — John Hawkins, Right Wing News

Let’s just say I was “underwhelmed”. As a friend ask in an email, “where did the great speech maker go?” I can only contend that this speech was like a task you know you have to do, but really don’t want to do. And the results are usually along the lines of what you saw or heard last night. — Bruce McQuain, QandO

President Obama’s speech from the oval office, only the second of his presidency, was surprisingly limp. With three momentous subjects to cover – Iraq, Afghanistan, and the U.S. economy – Obama struggled to say anything new or interesting. It isn’t just that the soaring rhetoric of 2008 has disappeared; Obama is now affirmatively boring. — Paul Paul Mirengoff, Power Line

Last night, Obama delivered yet another mediocre performance in what should have been a perfect setting: a war speech as Commander in Chief. He had the ability to be inspirational and talk of a great victory over tyranny and oppression; instead, he praised the performance of the troops without actually ever explicitly thanking them for it and skipped entirely any notion of victory. Instead of being gracious and effusive, Obama seemed to want to tamp down any enthusiasm over the effort made over the last several years in Iraq, a curious position for a Commander in Chief to take. — Ed Morissey, Hot Air

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