The President's Speech, and Why I Miss Bill Clinton

I think Barack Obama has succeeded in the impossible.

He's made me wish for the return of Bill Clinton.

I've never sat through a Presidential speech like last night's. Obama outlined a strategy that I largely agree with. Save for the decision to tell everyone the exact timetable we're on, which I consider a foolish concession to the leftist anti-war base that won't be satisfied with it, I can't quibble with what he said we'd do.

But dear God, that was painful to watch. I watched it late night on Tivo, and was heavily tempted to fast-forward. It was like watching a the favored high school senior deliver a limp speech in the speaking contest.

It's not the words, although I agree with those who think it would have been nice for the President to actually say the word "victory" once. It was the delivery -- Obama didn't want to be there. He doesn't want to be a wartime President -- that's not why he wanted the job. That showed, as noted by Tunku Varadarajan...

What has struck me most about Obama's Afghan enterprise—and his speech did not cause me to alter my view—is how obvious it is that he doesn't really want to do it. He wants to do health care. Obama has tried every delaying trick in the book—waiting for three months after Gen. McChrystal's request for more troops, having meeting after meeting after meeting, sending Gen. Jones to tell McChrystal not to ask for more troops, having his economic team say it will cost too much, framing the venture in terms of "exit strategies" rather than victory, etc. His ambivalence was on naked display tonight. Can you imagine Churchill delivering a speech like this, one so full of a sense of the limitation of national possibilities? No wonder Hillary—when the camera panned to her—looked like she needed a drink. No wonder the cadets all looked so depressed. Would you want Eeyore for commander in chief?

Oh, the cadets -- I felt sorry for them. Stephen Green drunk-blogged the speech. Amazingly, drinking didn't help make the speech better, which is a sure sign things were bad. Read his whole blog, but these parts were telling...

The officer speaking is having to remind the cadets to stand and applaud, because President Obama “is our commander-in-chief.” Think anyone had to remind cadets to be nice to the last president?

...I mean, he’s STILL going on about protocol. Reminds me of a story I heard at BlogWorld last month down in Vegas. I can’t give many details, but another Army officers had to remind his soldiers to applaud politely when Obama spoke. Not young, inexperienced cadets, but hardened battle veterans.

... “Our effort in Afghanistan.” “The scope of our interests.” He did finally use the word “war,” but not before framing everything in academicese.

...“July of 2011.” Congrats, AQ. Keep your head down until then, and you’ll do fine.

Again, these are not strategic decisions the President has made after ten months of review. This is kicking the can further down the road, but with a slightly bigger boot.

...Bad writing. Lame delivery. Tepid response — from cadets ORDERED to be nice.

And a strategic vision equal parts High School Essay Content and low-rent public relations.

I hope you had as much to drink as I did.

I didn't, but I needed it. We'll get back to the cadets in another post (Chris Mathews' outrageous and stupid comment about them included). Rich Lowry's got a great take on the speech...

Obama deserves credit for making this call, which wasn't easy given the inherent difficulties of Afghanistan, his own instinctive reluctance to use military force and the fierce opposition of his political base.

He stepped up -- but couldn't conceal his hesitations. It's a strange rhetorical trick to announce a policy and at the same time sow doubts about your own suitability to carry it out, yet Obama managed it.

...Obama constantly looked over his shoulder at his own restive party, and sounded dog whistles for the Left. He implicitly blamed Bush for everything short of the creation of al Qaeda, and cast his decision in light of his own reluctance to use force and his opposition to the Iraq war.

More importantly, he set out July 2011 as the month "our troops will begin to come home." This gave the speech an element of a Rorschach test: Some will see a stalwart re-commitment to the war effort; others, a promise to begin getting out in 18 months.

...Now, no matter what Obama's inner conflicts, McChrystal gets his chance to regain the initiative in the war. If he succeeds, the domestic politics of the war will begin to look different and at least one cause of Obama's psychic anguish will be alleviated.

Yes, it would've been better if Obama hadn't sounded at times like a premature Nobel Peace Prize winner shoved uncomfortably into a role of wartime leader. But, as Don Rumsfeld might say, you go to war with the president you have.

Ouch. Again, I have no earthly clue why some idiots are praising this decision -- Obama could have said we have a timetable for leaving, but the conditions will be dictated by what's on the ground. Even if he fully intends to cut things off in 18 months, there's no reason, other than domestic politics, to announce it. I understand that you're challenging the Afghans to start standing up for themselves. You're all convincing al Qaeda and the Taliban that if they can hang on for 18 months, they can indeed run out the clock.

Beyond that, the speech seemed passionless. The words as written were passionate, but the delivery was not. Obama's heart wasn't in it, and that's why the troops seemed tepid. As one of my good friends noted in an email, this needed to be a battle cry, at least a little bit. In sports terms, we needed Knute Rockne or Vince Lombardi or Bobby Knight. We got Jim Zorn.

Part of me wishes Obama would have gone with what he thought was right, even if I think he's wrong. I sense he wants out of Afghanistan, but won't do it for political reasons. That's not good -- not good for our chances of success, not good for the President, and definitely not good for those cadets and our other troops.

Clinton would have certainly made it more entertaining. And even if he would have been just as calculating and unsure, he never would have conveyed that in the speech. Even though the guy's a reprehensible human being in many ways, he understood political leadership has its time for expressing doubts, and that this would not be one of them. Obama betrayed that doubt throughout his speech last night.

But Lowry's got a point -- we're used to our troops pulling off miracles. Now they need to win a war with a leader who doesn't seem to want to fight the battle, after having told the enemy when we'll stop fighting.

God bless them.