GWB's Speech Makes the Case His Opponents Never Could

Peggy Noonan's newest article does a great job of summing up my reaction to the President's speech on Iraq this week.

I had the odd and wholly unexpected experience of feeling supportive of a troop increase until I saw the president's speech arguing for it. What a jarring, furtive-seeming thing it was...There was something unnerving about the speech, from the jumpy beginning to the stumbles to the sound glitches. A jittery affair, and some dusk hung over it. At the end I suspected the president's aides had instructed him again and again not to strut or have an edge. He perhaps understood that as: Got it--don't be me. He couldn't do wounded wisdom, but he could repress cocky cowboy. The result was that he seemed not chastened but effaced, not there. It was odd. One couldn't find the personal geography of the speech.

It is a strange experience to walk into a speech planning to support its policies, and to end up opposing them specifically because of the speech.

Not that I feel myself opposing the president yet, but I do feel he did not make the case fo the troop increase, and in fact did not make the case for any of the new plans. In fact, I feel like they gave a speech designed to convince, but which barely communicated at all.