Obama's Enemies List: A Growing List of Obama's Enemies

In his previous Oval Office address, the one on BP, Obama chopped the air with his hands, a style of gesticulation most presidents reserve for ropeline hackery in a campaign season. One of Obama’s advisers evidently told him to knock it off, and so in this week’s Oval Office address on Iraq, he carefully clasped his hands together. This is what passes for presidential growth. “Operation Iraqi Freedom” ended not with a bang but with a whimper. One would think a seven-and-a-half-year war deserves more than a seventeen-and-a-half-minute speech, and Obama couldn’t even feign interest or stay on topic for that brief period of time on Tuesday. He was clearly phoning it in, itching to “turn the page” back to himself. His plans, his agenda for America, the blah, blah, blah of “jumpstarted” industries, “innovation” unleashed, a “growing” middle class, all of which was code in the speech for more of his statism — these are the subjects he regards as urgent. The only pages he turns with any real interest are the ones he rereads in his two memoirs and his dog-eared copy of Rules for Radicals . Bored and annoyed by having to talk about the success of a surge in Iraq that he opposed, Obama lamely tried to change topics. Basic decency would have told almost any other president to refrain from slipping a stump speech into an address about the sacrifice of America’s troops. But Obama, prodded by panicky Democrats and his own restless egotism, couldn’t restrict himself to just that and attempted the crassest of connections: that military heroism abroad should inspire a redoubling of Obamaism at home: “And so at this moment, as we wind down the war in Iraq, we must tackle those challenges at home with as much energy, and grit, and sense of common purpose as our men and women in uniform who have served abroad.