Speechifying

So the speech that was to make or break the health care fight is over and the health care fight was not made or broken. But what did we learn last night? That in a speech that pledged to get specific, it still wasn't that specific. End this, stop that, do this, puppies good, challenge of our times, debate is over, I trust you all to do something. We learned that in general, the speech went over like gangbusters. But this was almost a certainty. Barry has a purdy mouth and he uses it to speak purdy words, but it's the 'actions' part we're all worried about, not the 'words' part.

Other things? Rep. Joe Wilson decided to take this speech and make a play for Mark Sanford's crown of "South Carolina's biggest politician asshole", when he decided that the very true thing President Obama said about reform not coverin' them dirty Mexicanos was a lie and he had to yell it out. We learned that Speaker Pelosi has a great 'bitch please' face. That Ted Kennedy was such a great politician he knew how to inject himself into the middle of a debate....post-mortem.

Still, after reading this speech (yeah I didn't watch it, America's Game: Steelers 2008 was on) the thing you wonder most is....wouldn't it have been better to deliver something like this and do the full court health care press a couple of months ago? Not let the lunatics run wild & unchallenged for months? Tried to explain in more concrete terms just what people should expect from a bill? The speech did show one thing: that if you knock President Obama down and kick him 70 or 80 times over the thing that his entire Presidency and 2010 midterm elections will be staked on, eventually he'll get up and deliver a strongly worded retort on why he thinks it would be great if his assailants would stop kicking their boot heels directly into his sternum. Hopefully our elected betters listened, or at least have a tired kicking foot.