The speech.

Let's see if I can thread this needle.

1. It was an interesting "folksy" speech. He expected laughs, he got them, and he waited for them. Further, it was solemn. Not over the top. His cadence was disjointed in ways that actually made him feel more human. More normal. He tried to speak as if he was talking to us, not at us. It felt as if he was, finally, trying to be a President.

2. The speech felt Clintonian, without the benefit of Bill Clinton - Bill Clinton being a man who can both talk to us and lift us. Interestingly, without the soaring nonsense, Obama is rather flat. If there was inspiration in the speech it was directed at competence. "Believe me - not because I am the great agent of change - but because I am competent." This is 180 degrees from who Obama has long been. Obama has always used these moments to soar past us. He didn't.

3. I don't care about what the DADT moment - except for "This year I will work...". This is what has been missing from this issue. His commitment to work on it. We shall see.

4. He lied overtly and covertly and by implication - a lot. More than I can remember. Some blogger will catalogue the lies. I am, oddly, neither surprised or hugely upset by them. He rewrote much of 2009, tilting it to favor him.

5. The speech was surprisingly uninspired. What I am amazed by was how different it was from the Obama of old. He was after the middle - even when he was throwing bones to the Left. He did not pivot Right in policy. He attempted to grab the middle in tone.

I do not know how this speech will play. My hunch is it won't matter much. He wants the middle to simply believe him...as he got the Left to earlier. The left loves the soaring rhetoric. The middle loves sober assessment. That is what he attempted. He changed his tone to reach the middle. Did he reach them?

I doubt it.