To say that President Obama’s Oval Office address on the oil spill left George Will unpersuaded would be kind.
Will offers Newsweek readers the following observations:
The news about his speech is that it is no longer
news that he often gives bad speeches. This one, however, was almost
magnificently awful.The banality of his first sentence??our nation
faces a multitude of challenges??was followed by trite war metaphors
about ?the battle? against oil ?assaulting? our shores, for which
?siege? he has a ?battle plan.? (Our government declares war
promiscuously?on drugs, poverty, cancer, environmental problems,
etc.?but never when actually going to war.) After Obama did what is de
rigueur?he announced a new commission?he, as usual, attacked George W.
Bush. (Chicagoan Obama resembles the fictional baseball player invented
by Chicago?s Ring Lardner?Alibi Ike.) Next, he resorted, yet again, to a
clumsy and painfully familiar trope that would get him bounced from a
junior-high-school debate tournament. He attacked a straw man: ?Over the
last decade, [the Minerals Management Service] has become emblematic of
a failed philosophy that views all regulation with hostility?a
philosophy that says corporations should be allowed to play by their own
rules and police themselves.? Another banality??oil is a finite
resource??introduced a weird lament about a problem he has aggravated:
?We?re running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water.? He
and his party oppose drilling in the tundra of ANWR and in shallower
coastal waters.
