What was Obama's Oval Office address about, exactly?

Excuse me, but what was President Obama’s Oval Office speech about?



Was it about Iraq, as we were led to expect, or was it about Afghanistan, as we were not led to expect? Was it about the economy, which the president mentioned, or education, which he also mentioned? Could it have been directed at Iraqis, whom the president praised in terms they would not have recognized, or was it about our troops, whom the president praised over and over again -- a kind of rhetorical tick that suggested he had run out of things to say? As a speech, Obama delivered a version of the pudding once served Winton Churchill. “Pray, remove it,” he supposedly said. “It lacks theme.”



An Oval Office speech is supposed to be an important event. This was only Obama’s second, after all, and if he asks us all to interrupt our schedules and listen to what he has to say, then he at least ought to say something. In this, he dismally failed. We knew that American has ended its combat role in Iraq. We knew that Iraq had been turned over to the Iraqis. We knew our troops are brave, that they have sacrificed much and that over 4,000 of them had died. This is all worth saying -- but not saying and saying and saying.



Obama did have his moment. He extended a hand to his predecessor, George W. Bush, and he said it was “time to turn the page.” This was Obama at his most generous, and it was a theme of his that deserves praise. As a nation, we suffer a kind of slow arsenic poisoning from toxic partisanship. But the best he could say about Bush is that he, too, loved the troops and his country. This I, for one, never doubted. But these are also the qualities of a Boy Scout -- nice, but not quite presidential. Bush was a dismal president.



The love of troops has become the mindless trope of our times. It squelches both thought and criticism. And while the troops do deserve support, surely the best way to support them is to make sure that they are used wisely. This was not the case in Iraq, and Tuesday the president did not convince that it is in the case in Afghanistan. This was a bad speech, lacking both content and emotional wallop. The best that can be said for it is that it suited the Iraq war itself. Like the war, it should not have been undertaken.