REFLECTIONS ON A SPEECH - AT 7:58 A.M. ET:  In journalism they call it the second-day angle.  A day after the event there are new perspectives, new reactions, and a general filling up of space.

We've now had a day to reflect on the president's Cairo speech.  Like almost every speech Obama gives, it does not wear well.  It gets worse over time.  Contrast that, please, with an A. Lincoln, whose speeches grew with the years.  Ditto an R. Reagan.

It's important, when analyzing a speech, not to overintellectualize, and find things that weren't there.  But I think we can add to our initial observations with the following notes on the Cairo speech:

1.  There was a remarkable silence in the speech about the corruption of the UN.  Obama should have confronted the Muslim nations on their misuse of the "world body" and how it has damaged the UN's credibility.

2.  There was a silence about journalism in the Muslim world, and how it has corrupted the thought of individual citizens.  People don't get their news directly.  They get it through media.  If the media is warped, the population will be warped.  The media in the Muslim world is very warped.

3.  There was silence about the celebration, in some Muslim countries, of the attacks of 9/11, except for one brief, ineffective reference.  The president had an obligation to say that some very bad Muslim attitudes extend far beyond the small group of extremists that he rightly condemned.  We've now made it a false article of faith that our problems in Muslim countries come from the proverbial few bad apples.  No, there are too many bad apples.

4.  Clearly, what has grated critics most about the speech was Mr. Obama's demonstration, once again, that he knows little of history, and distorts what he knows.  He said that the establishment of Israel grew out of Jewish victimhood.  It did not.  The movement to establish Israel began long before the Holocaust, and early Zionist thought actually intrigued some of the founders of the United States.  Similarly, the moral equivalence the president seemed to suggest between the Palestinian and Israeli narratives has raised many eyebrows.  The Israelis agreed to an Arab state, side-by-side, when Israel was created.  On the Palestinian side, there has never been an equivalent acceptance of Israel.  And the flirtation of the Palestinian leadership with Nazism during the Second World War also went unmentioned.

5.  The president has followed the speech by a visit to Germany where he spoke of the "misunderstandings" between the two sides in the Arab-Israeli conflict.  Once again the president reduces conflicts to intellectual propositions.  They are usually more visceral than intellectual, and he will find that the problems of the Mid east are not just misunderstandings.

6.  There were many good things in the speech, and Mr. Obama spoke eloquently.  Now comes the hard part - doing things.  And maybe this administration will learn why past administrations have had such a tough time.  It's time to get out of the seminar and into the real world.

June 5, 2009