Normally when a President takes to the airwaves with a major new policy announcement – especially an unpopular one – he then stays on that message for the next several days with follow-up travel and events. So it’s rather disconcerting that the President has not mentioned his new Afghanistan strategy again since Tuesday night.
So, absent any additional remarks from the President, the nation is left contemplating Tuesday night’s speech. And in their columns today, the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan and Kim Strassel offer insightful and thoughtful analysis that mirrors much of my own reaction to that speech. Like me, they have very mixed feelings, and worry that the President failed to rally the nation sufficiently (a worry that will grow if the President neglects to sell his plan to the American people in coming weeks).
If the president had devoted a fraction of eloquence he has for health care to the cause of Afghanistan this week, he could have rallied a nation that fundamentally wants victory. He’s also in the unique position to challenge the left. He might have reminded them that well before 9/11, Afghanistan was their cause, as they decried the Taliban’s ruthless repression of women’s rights in the late 1990s, and the destruction of the country’s cultural heritage. This would have at least put the president on offense.
The “bipartisan” Mr. Obama also missed a golden opportunity with Republicans. … Instead, Republicans sat through a speech full of gratuitous shots at the prior administration and at national-security tools the GOP also supports—such as Guantanamo Bay.
Similarly, Peggy writes that the President’s withdrawal announcement undermined much of the speech’s rallying message:
After the president announced his plan he seemed to slip in, “After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.” Then came the reference to July 2011 as the date departure begins. It was startling to hear a compelling case for our presence followed so quickly by an abrupt announcement of our leaving. It sounded like a strategy based on the song Groucho Marx used to sing, “Hello, I must be going.”
So good – and true.
And, offering some very good advice to the White House speechwriters, Peggy suggests the President limit his first-person references:
But there was too much “I” in the speech. George H.W. Bush famously took the word “I” out of his speeches—we called them “I-ectomies”—because of a horror of appearing to be calling attention to himself. Mr. Obama is plagued with no such fears. “When I took office . . . I approved a long-standing request . . . After consultations with our allies I then . . . I set a goal.” That’s all from one paragraph. Further down he used the word “I” in three paragraphs an impressive 15 times. “I believe I know” “I have signed” “I have read” “I have visited.”
I, I—ay yi yi. This is a man badly in need of an I-ectomy.
