You can watch the entire speech here, courtesy of the Washington Post.
Charles Krauthammer called the speech “a disgrace”. He said he rarely heard a presidential speech so shallow, hyper-partisan and so intellectually dishonest. “It was quite remarkable for the extent of demagoguery” contained in the speech. The video of his comments are here.
The Wall Street Journal had equal praise for the President’s remarks. “with its blistering partisanship and multiple distortions it was the kind Presidents usually outsource to some junior lieutenant. Mr. Obama’s fundamentally political document would have been unusual even for a Vice President in the fervor of a campaign.” “Mr. Obama then packaged his poison in the rhetoric of bipartisanship—which ‘starts,’ he said, ‘by being honest about what’s causing our deficit.’ The speech he chose to deliver was dishonest even by modern political standards.”
Here at Random Thots, we noticed some oddities as well. The first thing we caught was the President’s statement that “everybody pays taxes”. Actually, it’s something like 30% that pay no taxes at all. Later he said we lost our way in the 90’s by overspending. A few sentences later he said we need to get back to the fiscal responsibility we showed in the 90’s. I know, that’s nitpicking, but it was a prepared speech and I do expect better from the President of the United States.
He was biting his lip at the end of his sentences. His demeanor appeared like that of someone who could hardly hold his contempt. Obama doesn’t do well with numbers. Paul Ryan is more than his match.
RANDOM THOTS 