10:25 PM: Just got the text. About 4400 words.
10:35 PM: Maybe I’m overwhelmed by recent great speeches. But so far at least it feels sort of unexceptional.
10:37 PM: I wouldn’t say the delivery is off. It’s more that the speech itself seems intentionally even-keeled rather than soaring, transactional, a series of particulars. I’m sort of curious whether it’s intentional.
10:42 PM: As I listen to this, I’m more and more convinced the tenor of the speech is strategic, intentional. I don’t think his campaign wants a soaring speech. And well, they didn’t get it.
10:46 PM: Okay, tempo picking up a bit. And with a harder edge than we’d been led to expect vis a vis Romney.
10:49 PM: Now picking up momentum.
10:51 PM: There was no sense in the writing of this speech that they wanted to keep the president above the fray, above naming his opponent.
10:52 PM: ‘Citizenship’, the counter-attack to the “You Didn’t Build This” bamboozlement.
10:55 PM: “You Did That”
10:58 PM: Building to a very strong finish.
11:02 PM: Getting masterful. We know President Obama can do great speechifying. I’m thinking more the text of the speech, the structure and the different goals it addressed at different points.
