Jon Stewart had a line about President Bush. He used to say it whenever people implied the former president was a dunce. "I don't think he's stupid," Stewart would reply. "I think we're stupid, because if we weren't, he wouldn't talk to us this way." Obama doesn't talk to us like we're stupid. This wasn't an inspiring speech. And it wasn't a terrorizing speech. It was an explanation. The president told us what he was planning to do. And the speech was written as if he believed that we could understand him. He didn't wrap his agenda in a lot of rhetoric about America's mettle or hide it behind stories and icons. He just sort of said it. There wasn't a whole lot of news in the address. Obama has an agenda and he remains committed to it. Health care reform, he said, "will not wait another year." He asked Congress for "legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America." He set a goal that "by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world." He affirmed the importance of the stimulus and explained why he was helping the banks and defended his plan for homeowners. And that, basically, was the speech. He detailed the country's problems, articulated his thinking, and laid out his conclusions. He explained himself. The full text follows the jump. Read it for yourself, and weigh in. That, after all, is what it's there for.
