Obama's The SOTU Speech Stunk

Last night, Obama showed why he is one of the worst speechmakers we’ve ever had as President. Liberals used to claim his speeches were inspiring, but that was the Kool-Aid talking. As proof, I offer a simple challenge: tell me anything he’s ever said in a speech that anyone remembers? Last night was no different, except this speech was notably horrid rather than just dull. Even liberal talking heads found little they could use to praise him. Here’s why:

● The style was awful. It was like Obama hired a team of writers to come up with a collection of trite platitudes: give it your best, be better than you can be, give 110%, be prepared, work smarter not harder, be excellent to each other. . . and then he spent the night reading randomly from the list rather reading a real speech.

● His speech bounced around between topics and doubled-back so often that it seemed almost stream of consciousness. I honestly kept waiting for him to say, “oh, wait, I already talked about that.” Indeed, he lapped himself several times.

● His tone failed him too. He was trying to achieve the tone of a black preacher speaking in soaring tones about his vision for the future, but Obama seemed afraid to use the necessary words like “faith” and “hope” and “vision” and instead he sounded like someone channeling a grocery list. . . “We can have cabbage, and America needs cookies too.” His pathetic speechwriters would have turned “I have a dream. . .” into “I thought about some things while I was sleeping. . .” And worst of all, he seemed to get angry at times for no apparent reason.

● His jokes were so bad people didn’t even know they were jokes, as evidenced by the smattered applause uncomfortably long after he stopped to wait for the nonlaughter to die down.

● Although he spoke largely in bipartisan terms, it was hard not to notice that much of what he said was hardly bipartisan: (1) Don’t you dare try to undo what the Democrats did, (2) if you have ideas, tell me about them because so far I haven’t heard anything from you, and (3) we need to work together to put in place the ideas of Democrats. . . pause. . . pause. . . and Republicans.

● There were no specifics. Indeed, what exactly does he want except a return to the 1950s and high-speed rail so firemen can get porn over the net? He wants to cut some taxes, make some spending cuts, jack up some “investment” (i.e. spending) and increase taxes on the f*&^#ing rich. . . not to punish the bastards mind you, but because they’ve been sucking the blood of the poor. He plans to reorganize government in ways he can’t tell us about yet and he’s going to cut some regulations he can’t name yet.

Oh, that’s right, he did propose a “freeze” in federal spending for five years, which he claims would save $400 billion over ten years -- that’s $40 billion a year, which is all of 0.01% of the budget, or 1 penny for every hundred dollars. Moreover, he didn’t say what he meant by freeze. He doesn’t actually mean “freeze” as you and I understand it, because that would have resulted in bigger savings. He means not adding more to budgets he’s already laid out, which already include healthy increases in each of the next five years. And how does a five year freeze give you ten year savings in any event?

● His speech was full of contradictions. Wasn’t it great when everyone had jobs? Well, those days are gone, be happy! We need more high-speed rails, which evilly knock down homes and must be stopped. China is our friend, fear China! Everything is fine overseas, because it’s a dangerous world. The economy is growing great, but we desperately need to make it grow.

● His view of America’s past was truly skewed as well. Who outside of a handful of union thugs sitting unemployed in Detroit for the past twenty years ever thought they had a job for life? When was that the norm in America? Americans have always been mobile, moving between cities, states and jobs. Americans have always expected to change jobs over and over in their lives. And what’s this garbage about NASA being created in response to Sputnik?

● Demonstrated knowledge of the US Constitution: N/A.

● Then it was time to knock out some minor foreign policy stuff you won’t care about. We won Iran, we made friends with North Korea and China is our closest ally. Forget what you heard about North Korean shelling South Korea, or Iran still building a bomb, or the fact Obama spent 30 minutes blaming China for our problems. . . Obama apparently has. Iraq is now a paradise where no American troops are fighting anymore. . . they just die periodically in explosions while on “policing missions,” along with hundreds of locals. Maybe someday we can bring the troops home. . . wait, didn't Obama already achieved that. . . twice?

● His very brief discussion of Afghanistan was a fraud. Wars have consequences. We won, the Taleeebaaaahn are beaten, and unicorns will now populate the Earth. Oh, and we beat Pakeeestaaaahn too for good measure. Thank you, come again.

● Ok, now the crux of our foreign policy achievements. . . the part Obama focused on because he knew you would care deeply!!! Did you know that Squeegy Umbaruta once saw his village in Sudan as a war zone? Today, the killing has stopped (temporarily) because of the combined efforts of the Eritrean military and the African National Union. What a crowning achievement for Obama! Oh, and go Tunisia! Never mind that we did nothing to bring about that revolution or that we have no idea what kind of government will emerge.

● And while we’re on foreign policy, Muslims are great Americans, dammit.

● Oh, and we need to continue to be the moral example for the world, which is a little confusing since Obama has continued all of the supposedly immoral policies of the Bush years.

● His false compassion moments fell flat too. The people he brought for the old gimmick of pointing to someone in the crowd didn’t seem too excited to be there and nothing he quoted them as saying sounded like anything they would have said. And why the heck did he keep harping on “Alan Brothers Roofing”? Does he have a sponsorship agreement?

● His mention of Gaby Giffords seemed wrong too, on many levels. He has already given “the speech” about her. So why start with that again? Did the first “the speech” not take? Or was he using this to try to gain sympathy at the beginning of this speech? It seemed like he was using her as a sympathy mascot: “I know people who’ve suffered. . . be kind when you grade my speech.”

● Finally, what’s the take away from this speech? “Ask not what you can do. . .”, “A new day in America. . .”, “Read my lips. . . new world order. . .”, “The era of big government is over. . .”, “A date that shall live in infamy. . .”???? Nope. “Do big things.” Are you kidding? Who wrote this speech? Bill and Ted? There was nothing in this speech that stuck with you. You could see where they tried to jam a bunch of those on-liners into the speech (e.g. “our Sputnik moment”), but they all fell flat. Even the Democrats didn’t applaud when he dropped those lines.

This was easily Obama’s worst speech and that’s quite an achievement. I don’t know who wrote this turkey for him, but he needs to fire whoever it was. When this speech was over, you were left wondering if Obama understood America, understood Americans and understood his job.

Compare that with Paul Ryan. Ryan came across as thoughtful, sincere and honest. Obama came across as a man trying to fake his way through a flat speech and getting increasingly upset as people weren’t clapping. . . a real narcissist. And unlike Obama’s grocery list of pointlessness, Ryan gave a tour de force in ten minutes, tying together his belief in limited government, restrained government, faith in capitalism to solve our problems, laying out our problems and offering solutions, and making it clear that the new Republicans feel indebted to the American public and see themselves as our servants, not our masters.

In ten minutes, Ryan showed a much deeper, fundamental understanding of both the country and the Presidency than the understanding shown by the man who’s been sitting in the chair for two years. . . when he hasn’t been playing golf.