Anyone else watching GPS on CNN?

They are talking about the art of speechwriting. It's fascinating.

Peggy Noonan and Pat Buchanan both lampooned Bush for what they feel are two of the worst speeches any President has ever given. Buchanan cited the "axis of evil" speech because of its dangerous tone, and Noonan cited Bush's second Inaugural Address in which he claimed we would "rid the world of tyranny." She feels it was a delusional statement and that a President has to be ambitious but also tethered to reality.

They're talking about Obama's upcoming speech right now.

is one of the few "Writer" Presidents-to-be.

I believe that like most of us, they are even rejoicing in seeing excellent intelligence enter the White House once again, after a very long time. One of them just said, we'd have to go back to Lincoln to remember the last "Writer" President.

Although I wouldn't say he made fun of it. He harshly criticized it, denounced its message. He pointed out that Bush had the whole country and world supporting him when he made that speech and he completely destroyed his credibility by invoking the infamous WWII "axis" label. Buchanan feels that Bush basically undermined his own support in the U.S. and abroad when he did that. I agree with him on that. That speech angered me very much.

The tone was just right.

Way Too Much God
Was the president's speech a case of "mission inebriation"?

Friday, January 21, 2005 12:01 A.M. EST

The inaugural address itself was startling. It left me with a bad feeling, and reluctant dislike. Rhetorically, it veered from high-class boilerplate to strong and simple sentences, but it was not pedestrian. George W. Bush's second inaugural will no doubt prove historic because it carried a punch, asserting an agenda so sweeping that an observer quipped that by the end he would not have been surprised if the president had announced we were going to colonize Mars.

A short and self-conscious preamble led quickly to the meat of the speech: the president's evolving thoughts on freedom in the world. Those thoughts seemed marked by deep moral seriousness and no moral modesty.

No one will remember what the president said about domestic policy, which was the subject of the last third of the text. This may prove to have been a miscalculation.

It was a foreign-policy speech. To the extent our foreign policy is marked by a division that has been (crudely but serviceably) defined as a division between moralists and realists--the moralists taken with a romantic longing to carry democracy and justice to foreign fields, the realists motivated by what might be called cynicism and an acknowledgment of the limits of governmental power--President Bush sided strongly with the moralists, which was not a surprise. But he did it in a way that left this Bush supporter yearning for something she does not normally yearn for, and that is: nuance.

The administration's approach to history is at odds with what has been described by a communications adviser to the president as the "reality-based community." A dumb phrase, but not a dumb thought: He meant that the administration sees history as dynamic and changeable, not static and impervious to redirection or improvement. That is the Bush administration way, and it happens to be realistic: History is dynamic and changeable. On the other hand, some things are constant, such as human imperfection, injustice, misery and bad government.

This world is not heaven.

The president's speech seemed rather heavenish. It was a God-drenched speech. This president, who has been accused of giving too much attention to religious imagery and religious thought, has not let the criticism enter him. God was invoked relentlessly. "The Author of Liberty." "God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind . . . the longing of the soul."

It seemed a document produced by a White House on a mission. The United States, the speech said, has put the world on notice: Good governments that are just to their people are our friends, and those that are not are, essentially, not. We know the way: democracy. The president told every nondemocratic government in the world to shape up. "Success in our relations will require the decent treatment of their own people."

The speech did not deal with specifics--9/11, terrorism, particular alliances, Iraq. It was, instead, assertively abstract.

"We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." "Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self government. . . . Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time." "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in the world."

Ending tyranny in the world? Well that's an ambition, and if you're going to have an ambition it might as well be a big one. But this declaration, which is not wrong by any means, seemed to me to land somewhere between dreamy and disturbing. Tyranny is a very bad thing and quite wicked, but one doesn't expect we're going to eradicate it any time soon. Again, this is not heaven, it's earth.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110006184

I can't over how serious and somber these people are talking about Bush and his term. I remember when he stole 2000 how they all loved the dirt bag. How Gore was vile, a liar, a Zelig.

I don't know how I feel about all this. I'm disgusted with how the media bamboozled the low information voters and I'm pissed off that people don't take politics as seriously as they do shit like Nascar and Reality TV.

However, Barack Obama has restored my faith to some degree about this country and He is MY HOPE. I just pray nothing happens to him and that people will give him a chance. He's inheriting a major FUBAR and he's got his work cut out for him. Thank God, the man has a brain, less ego and is willing to work to get this country on it's feet not for his own glory but, for ours and our children and grandchildren.

I think the fact that Barack has two young daughters gives him just as much stake in the future of the country as the rest of us. I don't have kids but I am only 23 so I hope the country does improve. Like any good parent, he wants nothing but the best for his daughters and I hope he will do the most pragmatic things possible to help drag us out of the ideological ditch that Bush is leaving us in.

not discussing. Speech DELIVERY! Few presidents that I've known can do a good job at DELIVERING a speech...no matter how good it is.

JFK was very good, Clinton was very good, but sometimes spoke too long, and Obama is very good, not only with words but convincing people that he believes what he is saying and they should too.

Truthfully, Shrub had a hard time stringing a complete sentence together...even when it was written for him! I'm soo glad I won't have to be ashamed of our President anymore. Even when I don't agree with him, at LEAST he speaks clearly and displays intelligence!

Late Show - Farewell to "Great Moments in Presidential Speeches" 4:01
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x261112

I think he's great. Probably the best speech writing and delivery since Lincoln.

Proud wife turns 'axis of evil' speech into a resignation letter
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/feb/27/usa.matthewengel

The public had a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the White House yesterday when David Frum, the man said to have invented the phrase "axis of evil", resigned from President George Bush's speechwriting team, causing a debate as to whether he walked out or was pushed.

Mr Frum became well known after President Bush used the term in his state of the union address. But his celebrity came about only because his wife, Danielle, emailed friends with "wifely pride" to claim credit for her husband. The message was picked up by the media.

This was considered an affront to the discreet and collegiate traditions of the speechwriters' room, whose occupants are accustomed to having their precious words appropriated by the president, rewritten or scrapped, but are expected to remain stoically anonymous.

The Frumgate affair erupted when the commentator Robert Novak claimed on CNN that the president was so infuriated by the emails that Mr Frum was fired. This was denied by the White House and Mr Frum, who accused Mr Novak of "making stuff up" and said he had given a month's notice on January 24, while the speech was being written.

Originally it was "Axis of hatred"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Frum
In January 2003, he released The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush, the first insider account of the Bush presidency. Frum is widely cited as having authored the phrase "axis of evil," which he discusses in his book.<12> In fact, though, his original phrasing was "axis of hatred". As the title suggests, Frum also discusses how the events of September 11, 2001 redefined the country and the President. Frum writes, "George W. Bush was hardly the obvious man for the job. But by a very strange fate, he turned out to be, of all unlikely things, the right man."

What a jackass. That speech helped hurt America's credibility around the world.