Dean Barnett of the Weekly Standard was guest host for Hugh Hewitt today. He says that when he heard Obama declare himself "a citizen of the world" he began hopping up and down saying "I can't believe he was stupid enough to say that!"
Dean thinks Obama will really regret this remark, which was obviously deliberate, written into the biggest speech Barack Obama ever gave. A presidential candidate, whose relationship with America is already sort of questionable, goes to Berlin to tell 200,000 Germans that he is a citizen of the world? The RNC should repeat it in a thousand campaign ads. Pair it with Kerry's "global test." Let's see how America likes it.
As a whole, Dean rates the speech as a colossal failure. It was intended to be safe and platitudinous, a "great nothing-burger". Obama said "this is the moment" 16 times in the speech. Dean pointed out that Obama can write, so he must have picked this flacid phrase to repeat over and over on purpose. Dean also added as evidence that the lefty blogs, whom you would expect to gush, are practically maintaining radio silence about the speech, a sure sign that they too consider it a failure.
Krauthammer on Fox simply said the speech had a problem of scale: the backdrop was so grand, but the speech was so small. "Empty wind," said Krauthammer. Krauthammer is always lucid.
Naturally, the press are prostrating themselves in adoration. I heard some NYT times reporter on Charlie Rose declare solemnly that having 200,000 Germans turn out to hear him had to be great for Obama's campaign. My take: no, it doesn't.
Truly, the press cannot begin to see what they are doing to their own credibility with this open sycophancy. At this point, they are MORE in the tank than the Daily Kos. |
