The reviews have been coming in on Bobby Jindal’s response speech to President Obama’s address to Congress, and he’s getting a lot of negative feedback ranging from the content to the awkward delivery — and that’s from a lot of conservative outlets.
David Brooks was decidedly nonplussed:
“But to come up at this moment in history with a stale ‘government is the problem,’ ‘we can’t trust the federal government’ — it’s just a disaster for the Republican Party,” said Brooks.
The Fox News panel weren’t impressed:
Brit Hume: “The speech read a lot better than it sounded. This was not Bobby Jindal’s greatest oratorical moment.”
Nina Easton: “The delivery was not exactly terrific.”
Charles Krauthammer: “Jindal didn’t have a chance. He follows Obama, who in making speeches, is in a league of his own. He’s in a Reagan-esque league. … [Jindal] tried the best he could.”
Juan Williams: “It came off as amateurish, and even the tempo in which he spoke was sing-songy. He was telling stories that seemed very simplistic and almost childish.”
I thought his delivery was weak. The content will play well with the party base but seems unlikely to expand it…That said, it is hard for anybody to come out well from responding to a presidential speech to a joint session of Congress.
Kathryn Jean Lopez tried to play up the positive elements, but admitted there were problems:
Jindal does exude a practical hope, rooted in things that work. And he forces the point that politics should be about ideas — competing ideas — and that the best ones should win.
You can tell, though, that he’s used to just speaking (because he can) and not delivering prepared speeches.
And here’s Jim Geraghty:
Maybe Jindal Should Have Just Done a Q & A
Like Ramesh and Kathryn, I thought the text of Jindal’s argument was fine, but the governor’s delivery just wasn’t working for me. He seemed to have somehow figured out a way to speak too quickly and too slow at the same time. (A couple readers, who wanted to rave about him, agreed, using terms like “robotic” and “Mr. Rogers.”) His remarks sounded like they were being read aloud, not spoken naturally.It came as something of a shock, considering how well Jindal performed on Meet the Press and at the White House meeting yesterday.
