Obama's inaugural address today

[AndromedaPatFan]

As I see it:

Good speech, perhaps very good. Certainly not great.

• Makes a strong case for modern liberalism, and that was overwhelmingly its focus.
• It leaves little scope for disagreement of the form "No, that's wrong."
• It leaves much more scope for "Yes, but there's all this other stuff you didn't mention" or "Technically, that's hard to argue with, but I expect you to overdo things as you at upon it."

Further:

• The biggest source of disagreement is probably from the greatly overlapping"No!! All regulations are bad!!" and/or "Debt!! Debt!! Debt!!" crowds.
• The first group is just wrong; Obama and other Democrats have become moderates about regulation. (That would be an example of "I'm sure you'll overdo it.")
• On the second, I'm in the group that says the "debt" problem is really about entitlements that will be unsupportably huge in the future unless the law changes between now and that future. I.e., they're not a CURRENT crisis. (Debt is an example of "You didn't mention THAT elephant in the room.")
• Another source of disagreement with Obama is distress over surveillance, drones, etc. (Another unmentioned elephant.) On those I'm largely on the side of the disagreers. In some ways, he's a great threat to liberty.

[AndromedaPatFan]

David Brooks' critique: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/op...e-turn.html?hp