Last night we posted some instant reactions to President Obama's address to Congress on health care reform. Here are some additional thoughts this morning:
Ezra Klein: "Obama needed to do the precise opposite of what he's best at. He needed to bring health-care reform down to earth rather than launch it into orbit. He needed to make it seem less dramatic and unknown. He needed to cast it not as change, but as improvement. All of which he did."
Walter Shapiro: "Obama delivered what I believe (as a long-ago presidential ghostwriter) was probably his best speech since the 2004 Convention keynote address that put this little-known Illinois state senator on the staircase to the stars."
Josh Marshall: "I think Obama may have resumed a certain command over the debate. Because the contrast between him and the hucksters to whom the Republicans have ceded this debate, and the difference between the actual details of reform and whatever it is everyone has been talking about through August, is simply very difficult to ignore."
Jonathan Chait: "I've written critically of this notion that health care is a drama revolving around Obama. It's not. The Senate is the key entity here. No speech is going to have much effect -- it could make health care more popular, but centrist Senators were dragging their feet long before Obama's slide in public opinion. Fortunately, I also think that at the end of the day, even moderate Democrats will recognize their self-interest in passing something substantial."
Adam Nagourney: "He managed to invest his case with both economic and emotional urgency
-- particularly when he invoked the memory of Senator Edward M. Kennedy,
whose widow, Victoria, was in the audience -- without getting bogged
down in too many details."
Jill Lawrence: "This was a speech advertised as the most important of Obama's
eight-month presidency. It may not have been critical to passing health
reform. But it was critical for him -- to remind people he isn't always
detached, and to recapture the change dynamic that catapulted him to
the White House."
Marc Ambinder: "I thought it was much more focused on the 535 elected officials in the
room than any joint speech I'd seen. It kind of felt more like a
Roosevelt Room talk than a speech to the country. A lot of process. That
said, the Kennedy riff was powerful and the portrayal of Kennedy as
bipartisan leader was pretty brilliant. The line about government
bureaucrats and insurance bureaucrats was a good conflation. Was it
enough? I don't know. I don't think we'll know for awhile."
