Chait thought the speech dull but necessary:
For most of the last year, liberals have been berating the administration for things that weren’t its fault. Rhetoric and “leadership” can only go so far in the face of structural realities – Obama can’t turn Ben Nelson into a liberal. But we’ve finally reached a moment where these intangible qualities do matter. The Democratic Party has been verging on total breakdown, and the administration has wilted in the face of the challenge. Stemming the Democratic panic was the primary task of this speech. We’ll soon see if it succeeded. I’d bet that it did.
Chris Buckley was stirred:
Tonight Mr. Obama proved—once again—that he hears the American music and can play it like a maestro. As well as Ronald Reagan. Both presidents had—have—have music in their souls. The other people in the room where I watched the speech were in tears by the end—the kind that stream down the face. I managed to hold those back. But I could not hold back my admiration at the performance, in particular of Mr. Obama’s deep humanity, as evinced by his profound, almost Lincolnesque humor. Oh dear, are tears streaming down my face, one way or the other?
Douthat still has questions:
As for health care — well, I’m still not sure what to make of the health care section, which seemed too tepid if the White House is still hoping to pass the legislation as it is, and too combative if they want to explore a smaller and more bipartisan bill. Yesterday Ezra Klein suggested that the White House has acted confused and uncertain on health care because it is confused and uncertain. Nothing in tonight’s speech dispelled that perception — and presidential uncertainty can’t be a good thing for the legislation’s prospects
James Surowiecki was impressed:
Most important, it placed jobs at the heart of the speech, which is where they belong, both politically and in terms of policy. And it was good to see Obama do this without being obviously or stridently populist. After the speech, a couple of pundits described Obama’s opening reference to hating the bank bailout as a call to arms, but it didn’t come off like that at all. Instead, it seemed like a honest statement of fact: everyone hates the bailouts, but they had to be done. And what followed was right on point: what matters now is not vengeance, but repayment (the bank tax) and substantive reform, so that the bailouts don’t happen again. This felt like Obama at its best: acknowledging people’s anger and the justice of it, but always drawing the discussion back to rational, pragmatic grounds.
Ezra Klein wants action:
Obama made a strong statement in favor of health-care reform, but he didn't call on the House to pass the Senate bill, or the Senate to pass modifications, or for any alternative path to be followed. Success here will be measured not in reactions to the speech, but in the outcome of the effort. So too with the section on the economy, which sounded convincing, but will matter a lot less than the unemployment rate eight months from now.
Yglesias thought Obama was right to not get specific on health care:
The speech is a speech to the American people, especially to people who follow politics pretty casually, and regular people don’t want to hear about congressional process. The reality is that this is going to have to be worked out behind the scenes, behind the dread closed doors. But one of the main points of the speech was to get the focus on Obama and Obama’s themes and off closed door dealmaking. So he emphasized the need for action and correctly situated the call for health reform in a broader context of economics reform.
And Blumenthal rounds up the insta-polls.
The Dish 