Obama's Speech: That's It?

Obama's speech was amateur hour, plain and simple. Presidents just don’t use their ability to address a joint session of Congress simply to make a political stump speech — it’s utterly unprecedented.

Did the President of the United States really just convene a joint session of Congress to announce that the time for bickering is over, that the healthcare issue is very, very important, that we need to take Real Action, that tort reform is (maybe) on the table (once Kathleen Sebelius looks into it), and that an individual mandate (hello, Mitt Romney!) is a must? Was that the big speech? Am I missing something?

Sadly, I don’t think so. That was amateur hour, plain and simple. Presidents just don’t use their ability to address a joint session of Congress simply to make a political stump speech — it’s utterly unprecedented. And let’s be very clear: a stump speech is exactly what that was. That he needed to do that, of course, is confirmation of the position of weakness he finds himself in. He was doing what he always has done when he finds himself in a tough spot: he made a speech. The mission last night was to keep healthcare from becoming, well, his Waterloo.

And yet, it wasn’t even good: there was nothing groundbreaking proposed in his speech. He refused to commit either way on the government “option,” and I envision not one Congressman changing his mind either way on the still-non-existent proposal. Worse still, he used the speech for exactly the same purposes he condemned the right for employing — to bicker (you guys expanded the deficit, too, you know!), scare (people will die if I don’t get my way), and divide (don’t waste my time if you’re against this idea). To the discerning listener, portions of the speech were downright shrill at times. Unfortunately for Obama, we're not in campaign mode anymore. Comforting platitudes and vaguely bipartisan overtones cannot win the day, because vagueness cannot be written into a bill.

The emptiness of the speech, as Obama might like to put it, was not about left or right. As a citizen, I found the speech to be completely pointless. This sort of vapidity is all-too-typical of the president, and it’s getting really old, really fast.

Citizens and commentators should send Obama a clear message tomorrow: go back to your office and come up with something substantive or stop wasting our time.