Tedious.
That assessment may be only half as long as my assessment, yesterday, of the speech itself, but it's every bit the match in clarity. Nonetheless, following yesterday's format, I'll contribute a few more words--mostly those from the tediously familiar ranks of really, really tough guys.
National Review lamented, "Not one word about American martial strength spoken at West Point, not one effort to inspire our country’s future military leaders." Here, the Prussian touch and its almost childish awe of "inspirational" militarism are both self-evident and self-explanatory. Children with wooden swords talking to other children.
Hertiage Foundation featured Texas Rep. Mac Thornberry, who lectured that "Power and influence in the world come from having capability plus the will to use it," which the 20th century's Axis Powers certainly believed; and "distinguished Heritage fellow" Kim Holmes warned that "World War I wasn’t [ever] truly over; World War II was around the corner. If we walk away from Afghanistan too soon, we may need to return again to finish the job." I'm sorry, but making the philosophical connection between Europe's interwar years and Afghanistan's millennium-long tribal conflicts is, unlike Kim H. Holmes', PhD, an abstraction beyond my metaphysical abilities.
The Weekly Standard? It trotted out Max Boot and Elliott Abrams to respond, the latter of whom said Obama "[took] credit for successful actions attributable to his predecessor." Enough said. Good God and Mother of Jesus, enough said.
Powerline decided to hurl its indignation at Obama's reference to American exceptionalism, and it did so by rolling out the big French gun of Alexis de Tocqueville. "He observed many distinctive features of America--our republican form of government, our industriousness, our focus on the practical, our religiousness, our community spirit, etc. Adherence to international norms played no part in Tocqueville’s account of American exceptionalism; if it had, the Frenchman would have become a laughingstock instead of a sage." Powerline's American-studies scholar neglected to mention that Tocqueville's chief worry about our country was its suffocating conformity to trendy majoritarian ideas--you know, like the nearly decade-long ride of neoconservatism; i.e. catastrophe, QED.
The surprise winner in the follow-up mush of tedious naysaying, however, is the New York Times. Obama's speech, declared the editorial board, "is unlikely to quiet his detractors," and "many still doubt that he fully appreciates the leverage the United States has even in a changing world." By definition, detractors are expected to be unquieted (which in the case of Obama's foreign-policy sanity is what makes them so tedious). As for unrealized "leverage"--what does that mean? You got me; in fact you got the NY Times' editorial board, which elaborates not. Not one whit.