The American Spectator

I don’t want to write about the State of the Union address, because I don’t want to watch Barack Obama give a SOTU address and I don’t even want to think about Obama giving such a speech. He says the same things over and over, in the same hectoring, holier-than-thou tone of voice, creating and pretending to knock down the same old straw men, all while using first-person pronouns so often that not even a few dozen Scrabble sets could supply enough letters “I” to meet the demand. Obama’s self-regard is insufferable, his leftist bubble impenetrable, his magnaminity and graciousness entirely non-existent, and his mendacity unforgivable.

Other than that, it should be a pretty good speech. Of course, other than the lousy economy, the weak foreign policy, the abuse of executive authority, and the poisoning of civic dialogue, it’s been a pretty good presidency, too.

The good news is that, unless Obama somehow changes his tune, this speech is likely to sound like finger nails on a national chalkboard to at least a very large plurality of the viewers, and like at least a mildly annoying hum to another large number. The reality is that Obama is rarely a very effective speaker, at least in terms of persuading those who aren’t already on his side. Chris Matthews may think he’s hearing another sermon on the mount, but a vast number of Americans will just hear abrasive sermonizing from a man with no moral authority to preach.

Most of us know that under Obama’s attempted regency, the state of our union is not good. No amount of speechifying can change that reality.