I concede that, even as a Deranged Millionaire, I have less a grasp on the economic contours of the speech than Andrew Sullivan, who was profoundly disappointed by it. 

It’s true there was little uplift, and some very sour moments when, in his calls to “Frack, baby, frack, but frack somewhat less frackingly,” it sounded like he was trying to win the last 18 Republican debates in the worst possible ways. 

But even though I would have enjoyed something more soaring and ambitious, he can’t plausibly present himself as a leftist or any sort of idealist after these three years. That would seem completely hollow, both emotionally and politically. And the times don’t call for it. 

What I appreciated about this speech is what I’ve always appreciated about Obama, even when he was running: his appeal to reality. The Republicans have created a bizarre, oxymoronic myth of Obama as an up-jumped idiot man child who is also a sinister foreign marxist agent AT THE SAME TIME.

And yet, I am positively Ayn Randian in my belief that no matter what story you tell, there is a reality. Obama’s argument is to point out that there have been real achievements, real—if frustratingly slow—progress in the economy, real job creation, real decrease in dependence on foreign oil, real recovery in the auto industry, real gains abroad, and what seemed to be a genuine desire to find real, practical solutions that can actually get passed, even if in final form they drive everyone crazy. 

From the beginning, Obama said that progress would be neither easy nor quick, and it could not be done without pragmatic compromise. This is an extension of that argument. 

I would think that given A. Sullivan’s very welcome defense of the Obama record that he would welcome this tack. But it seems he found at least large portions of the speech to be disingenous. Perhaps it was. Perhaps nothing about it was real. But I did not find the final movement of the speech to be as creepy as he did. I did not take it to mean that we should all blindly bend to the command of the president in all things; but there is a single mission, which is restoring the economy to health, and that congress must put aside political BS to tackle that mission in good faith. Which obviously hasn’t been happening. 

My 2 cents, which are worth exactly .076 cents is that the President has chosen to try to neutralize the most ludicrous attacks of his enemies with the evidence of his own competence and centrism, but make his real election year enemy the congress itself. 

And when someone in the audience audibly screams “No!” when the President calls for an end to corruption in that very room, it’s hard to imagine him not winning. 

END OF PAINFULLY SINCERE NON-FUNNY. 

That is all.