Article in the current issue of Newsweek about the POTUS.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5853701/site/newsweek/

I heard someone say the other day...

"It's not only about your journey...it's your destination!"

Sounds like the old joke:

Q: What do you call the guy who graduated dead last in the med-school class?

A: Doctor.

Q: What do you call the guy who graduated dead last from USMA?

A: Lieutenant.

1. Generally speaking, the speech was just not well-written. There are good speeches and bad ones, and this one was mediocre. It wasn't so much the delivery as the text itself that I disliked. Too few sound bites, weak rhetoric and little substance from a public policy point of view.

2. He should have catered more to the media. The speech did absolutely nothing to try to secure a positive media spin on the speech. It did not attempt to respond directly -- or at least did not do so adequately IMO -- to any of the issues constantly raised by the press. This was a lost opportunity.

3. What exactly were the domestic policy accomplishments? And what is the agenda? I thought this was all incredibly weak. He left himself open to attacks for this. I am a rabid Republican and I was disappointed in his lack of policy leadership. Can you imagine how a moderate would react?

I didn't give the speech an F. There were no gaffes, so it was OK, I guess. But I do not believe that the speech won a single vote for the President. It was good enough and probably made existing supporters happy, but this is a very important speech -- one that can actually get people to get out and vote, move from undecided or even change sides. I believe it was a missed opportunity.

But what do I know?

Thanks for your reply.

Doc

I'm with Dan on this. I'm new to Convention speech-making simply because it was never shown in full over in London while I was awake. While I understand that applause during a speech is good- it COULD be like direct-audience feedback if it wasn't a given that everyone was clapping- I think it interrupts the flow of the speech. The President here gave a speech here for convocation, and it was only interrupted twice by clapping, and it was at appropriate times. Thusly, the rhythm of the speech was preserved. I'd have much preferred the parts of the President's speech that I saw if the applause had been similarly limited to appropriate moments.

The CINC was enjoying it, though...

What did you guys think of the CINC using spanish in his speech?

Thank you,

Solid

AL, actually the common form of that joke is a theorem:

4.0 = 2LT

2.0 = 2LT

therefore,

4.0 = 2.0

:D

A syllogism. And a classic example of the fallacy of the undistributed middle.

But pretty funny nevertheless!