DiscussMormonism.com

Let’s be blunt. Barack Obama gave a dull and pedestrian speech tonight, with nary an interesting thematic device, policy detail, or even one turn of phrase. The crowd sure didn’t see it my way. The delegates were near delirium; to what extent they were merely still feeding off the amassed energy of the previous two nights I can’t say.

And swing voters watching at home? They probably weren’t as bored as I was, but it seems inconceivable that they’d have been enraptured. This was the rhetorical equivalent, forgive the football metaphor, of running out the clock: Obama clearly thinks he’s ahead and just doesn’t need to make mistakes. But when football teams do that, it often turns out to be the biggest mistake of all, and they lose.

I didn’t like the lack of specifics at all. The thing I loved most about the Clinton speech was the specifics. The 24 vs. 42 million jobs created under Republican and Democratic administrations, the explanation of why Romney “restoring” that $716 billion would deplete the Medicare Trust Fund more quickly: that’s great stuff. And especially important, I think, in an election like this one. When you’re running against people to whom facts are irrelevant, the way you kill them is with facts. Not with rhetoric that’s vague and too subtle.

-Michael Tomasky

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/07/obama-a-pedestrian-and-overconfident-speech.html

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: I was stunned. This is a man who gave one of the great speeches of our time in 2004, and he gave one of the emptiest speeches I have ever heard on a national stage. Yes, it had cadence, and yes, there were deceptions in it, but that is not what is so striking about it. There was nothing in it. This is a man who believes that government can and should do a lot. There is nothing in here that tells us how he's going to go from today to tomorrow. For any of the so called goals and what government is going to do, what is he going to enact?

At least Romney had a five point plan. What we heard from Obama was a vision. And he pulls numbers out of a hat. 100,000 new math and science teachers. 600,000 more people working in natural gas. Two million more trainees, and he doesn't say how we get from A to B. It's a vision. I have a vision of an America where there is no disease and everybody has a private airplane, but unless I tell you how we get there, I’ve said nothing. And what is so surprising, is that - all he had left - he can't speak about his record on the economy, and it's not a good one. As we heard, he didn't speak about achievements, the one that's liberals like, ObamaCare, stimulus and etc… they're unpopular.

So, at least he would talk about the future, what he's going to to. There was nothing there. I’m amazed that he was -- it was like this is a guy who is the A student in the class turning in a paper clearly a C, and the teacher says, “How could you do this? Why did you mail it in?” I felt the Biden speech was infinitely better, because it was empathic and carried a message, but the Obama speech, I thought was flat and had no content in it. Otherwise, I loved it, really…

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/09/06/krauthammer_on_obama_one_of_the_emptiest_speeches_i_have_ever_heard.html

Sethbag wrote:Actually I thought he said a lot. And he was fairly specific, much more so than Romney ever was.

It's like we listened to two totally different speeches.

(ignoring bcspace's links to perpetual clowns like Krauthammer)