Turn The Page: Obama's Iraq Speech

by Richard B. Simon

The shallow analysis of Presidential speeches by those paid big money to do so is amazing and shameful -- and damaging to our national discourse. Don't any of the people who are paid to opine on Presidential addresses actually read them?

At the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer purposefully ignores Obama's argument to claim that Obama is not interested in fighting the war in Afghanistan. Richard Cohen, blogging at the Washington Post, asks "What was Obama's Oval Office Address about, exactly?" Michael Gerson, who -- the Post (like the News Hour, where he occasionally fills in as the conservative opiner) consistently neglects to tell its readers -- was Bush's speechwriter, judges Obama's speech, by Gerson's own standards as set out in his previous column, as insufficient -- including insufficiently triumphal.

Over at Fox News, the "news" headline (on an AP story) read: Obama Marks End of U.S. Combat Mission in Iraq, Salutes Bush.

"Salutes Bush"? After a paragraph that begins with Bush announcing the bombing of Baghdad, and continues with a litany of all the ways in which the war went wrong, Obama says he had spoken with Bush that morning, and tells us:

It's well known that he and I disagreed about the war from its outset. Yet no one could doubt President Bush's support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security.

In other words, while I still maintain that this was a dumb idea and a seven-year-long disaster, I won't question Bush's motives.

If that's a salute, it's one-fingered. It's not the first time Obama reaches out to Bush with one hand, and slips the shiv between his ribs with the other.

The sort-of central metaphor -- that the country is a ship at sea during a series of storms -- is a recurrent theme in Obama's speeches (here he says that the troops are "the steel" in the ship of state.) A ship at sea isn't that resonant in a speech about a desert war.

Still, Obama's speech is -- as usual -- clearly organized, its thesis transparent:

The war in Iraq is over. It's time to "turn the page" -- to ramp up and therefore finish the war in Afghanistan, and to make rebuilding our own country "our central mission as a people, and my central responsibility as president."

That is because, as Obama puts it, "over the last decade, we have not done what is necessary to shore up the foundation of our own prosperity."

This, Obama argues, has been a lost decade, in which all our resources -- a trillion dollars -- have been dedicated to fighting wars, while our infrastructure, industry, competitiveness, prosperity, and tendency toward progress and innovation, have all disintegrated at home, leaving the middle class (which he pinpoints as the source of our nation's strength) devastated.

Krauthammer doesn't like this. Krauthammer argues that rebuilding our own country is a distraction. Krauthammer thinks our central mission as a people ought to be fighting the war in Afghanistan, not rebuilding our economy. I suppose, if that's so, he should buy himself a plane ticket to Kabul toot sweet, and get to work.

Though, I have to say, I don't seem to recall Krauthammer arguing that Bush should keep the fight against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan as the country's central focus. As I recall, he was among those who led the cheer squad when Bush pulled US Troops out of the Battle for Tora Bora, and sent them to Iraq to prepare the way for invasion -- and allowed bin Laden and friends to escape into Pakistan, where they remain today.

I don't know how the guy looks himself in the mirror in the morning.

Really. I don't.

Nods to the troops are requisite at this point -- and Obama's felt rote. But his message is this: although this war sucked, the troops who waged it are awesome -- and we're going to give them medical and psychological care, and send them to college.

Honestly, watching the speech, I thought it was lousy, too. Obama seemed tired. His voice was hoarse, and so uncharacteristically high-pitched (and therefore weak-sounding) -- like he'd had too many smokes and not enough water. He'd also already given a speech earlier in the day to troops. He's also not that great at speaking to a camera, rather than to people. Had he given this speech before Congress, it would have had much stronger resonance.

On paper, the speech is characteristically rhythmic, straightforward, and difficult to disagree with. Anyone -- including David Brooks and Mark Shields for the News Hour -- who tells you that it wasn't about anything, or that it was vague or unfocused or purposeless, must have been, like Maureen Dowd, lulled into inattention by the new carpet. They certainly didn't read it.

After reading it, you realize that, purposefully or not, Obama was projecting war-weariness.

The most resonant phrase in this speech is, "It's time to turn the page."

We've lost a decade. We need to move on and deal with everything we've left undone as we've dumped blood, money, and energy into Iraq. Yes, he says pretty clearly, we need to finish killing the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- a job which, again, was left to metastasize when we shifted focus, troops, and resources to Iraq.

Here's the key paragraph, the one in which he redifines what our purpose is as a country, and tells us what he sees is now the central purpose of his presidency:

Our most urgent task is to restore our economy, and put the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs back to work. To strengthen our middle class, we must give all our children the education they deserve, and all our workers the skills that they need to compete in a global economy. We must jumpstart industries that create jobs, and end our dependence on foreign oil. We must unleash the innovation that allows new products to roll off our assembly lines, and nurture the ideas that spring from our entrepreneurs. This will be difficult. But in the days to come, it must be our central mission as a people, and my central responsibility as president.

So, reform the schools, invest in community colleges, take away oil and coal's artificial (and government-subsidized) price advantage over alternative energy technologies -- and therefore unleash innovation and crank up manufacturing in what will be our next great industry: clean energy.

(In case you were wondering why the creepy, oil-soaked Koch brothers are "waging war" against the President.)

Like I tell my students, when somebody tells you, this is our most urgent task, it must be our central mission as a people, and it is my central responsibility as president, you might want to pay attention to what that person actually says.

And when the President of the United States makes a speech on television, and you want to understand what he said, you'd better read it.