It wasn't his best speech.
For one thing, I know he believes in recycling, but did he have to reuse so many of his lines from previous speeches?
For another, he kept saying, "Thank you, Minnesota," when there wasn't even a primary in Minnesota on Tuesday, and anyway, he should have been talking to the nation as a whole.
And by so effusively praising Hillary Clinton right after she not only failed to concede to him but kept insisting that she was better than him, he actually came across as weak as opposed to gracious.
He also seemed at times whiny, as when he said of McCain, "I respect his many accomplishments, even if he chooses to deny mine."
And he threw his accomplishments together in a mish-mash: "I've worked with friends in the other party to provide more children with health insurance and more working families with a tax break; to curb the spread of nuclear weapons and ensure that the American people know where their tax dollars are being spent; and to reduce the influence of lobbyists." Generally, it's not a good idea to mention tax breaks and nuclear weapons in the same sentence.
On substance, while he was obviously correct to denounce McCain for wanting to continue Bush's Iraq policy, Obama stooped to the misleading and morally bankrupt criticism that Bush and McCain have been asking "nothing of Iraqi politicians." That's not the problem. After all, Bush and McCain have been leaning heavily on Iraqi politicians—and for many of the wrong reasons: including to sign a long-term agreement on military bases and to pass an oil law that would be a gift from heaven to ExxonMobil. What's more, the suggestion (which Bush himself has made) is that the Iraqis are ingrates for all we've done for them. After killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, U.S. politicians are in no position to be scolding Iraqi politicians.
Obama was powerful, though, when he insisted that "the chance to get a college education should not be a privilege for the wealthy few but a birthright of every American."
He was powerful, too, when he said we don't deserve "another election that's governed by fear, and innuendo, and division."
And he was very moving when he said that "America, this is our moment," and that we'll be able to look back on it as a time when we ended a war and "when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."
By calling on the nation to "reflect our very best selves, and highest ideals," he not only put the last seven and a half years of Bush-Cheney in stark relief, he offered at least the possibility that we can "turn the page."
And yet his ritual invocation of the United States as "the last, best hope on Earth," and the chants of "USA, USA," from the crowd gave a hint that what we might be seeing is just American exceptionalism with a new face.
