Nothing new in Obama's speech

POLITICO - May 22, 2009 - By JAMES CARAFANO

You would think it would be hard to argue that President Barack Obama’s Notre Dame speech and his speech at the National Archives on combating terrorism were the same speech. But it’s not. Both, the more you examine them, really said nothing. And both were given for the same reason — to patch holes in the president’s seemingly impenetrable force field of popularity. Let’s start with what Obama actually said in both speeches. In neither one, both on highly controversial subjects, did he move his administration’s policies forward. Nothing truly new came out of either speech. That’s particularly true for the counterterrorism one. Truth is, the detention policies of George W. Bush and Obama are more alike than not. Indeed, Bush came within a weekend of announcing the closure of the Guatanamo prison. Somewhere between Saturday and Sunday, he realized he would never get congressional support without a concrete plan on what to do with the detainees. He was right. Obama has discovered he faces the same problem. Neither speech was really about addressing substantive policy issues. Both were designed primarily to make Americans appreciate the challenges of being president. “Sympathize with me, people!” he was essentially saying. “This governing stuff is hard!” (Read more: )