Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Notes on President Obama's Speech at West Point

Notes from interview with ABC-TV Channel 7 Chicago: December 2 2009. Watch for video on site:http://abclocal.go.com/wls/index. The speech was his first public and televised action as Commander-in-Chief. There was no real news since the story of 30,000 U.S. additional troops had been released to newspapers 18 hours before the talk and 12 hours before to the morning news broadcasters. As usual (but not his best) he delivered an eloquent talk about hope, American dreams by quoting most of our parchment documents. He give a great mini-lecture (the best our recent Presidents have been able to deliver) to the audience near 20 year olds who were in grade school when these wars began. His "bone" to the progressively liberal Democrat base of announcing an end date for departure in a little over a year created the greatest stir. Some would say that "no one really likes the illogical idea except the enemy". The applause, though spare was polite. On the other hand, he shook hands hundreds of times with the cadets on the way out of the auditorium seating over 4000. It is a devil's dilemma for Obama. He has to get a national healthcare bill passed with help from the Democrats but his bill of $50,000,000,000 (billions) for the war in Afghanistan (and Pakistan?) has to be supported by the Republicans and more conservative Democrats.

Today, the President placed himself in the fragile but great position of being a leader. Who will follow? More real news to come.

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