The Fast Talker
Posted on February 24, 2009
The Fast Talker
Talk about needing some decaffeinated coffee.
The President flew through his remarks today at a rate rarely seen in the history of the Republic.
He talked so fast in his first Address to a Joint Session of Congress it made my head spin.
Perhaps he wanted to make certain that folks in the chamber wouldn’t quite catch up to what he was saying.
He made some important points during the speech.
He promised to try to weed out waste, fraud and abuse in Medicare. Many Presidents have tried to do that, only to be foiled by liberal activists. Let's hope this President can be more successful.
He said that he didn’t want to pass the debt on to the next generation, less than a week after he signed the largest spending bill in history.
He promised to go line-by-line in the budget, and then promised that he would end programs that don’t work. I doubt that Congress heard that one.
He said that education starts at home. That could be the most important line in his speech, because unless there is more responsibility placed on parents, the schools will never improve. But choice is an important part of responsibility, and the Democrats are taking away school choice (at least in DC), in the big spending bill that it will pass later this week.
He repeated his promise to not raise taxes on people who make less than $250,000, but woe to you if you happen to make enough money to pass that threshold. To pay for all the new spending, those poor suckers are going to have to pay a lot of new taxes. That won't help the economy grow, especially since many of those "dirty rich people" are job-creators.
Obama, looking at sagging approval ratings (well, they were lower this week than last week) attempted to appeal to moderate and centrist Republican voters in his fast speech. He knows that if he wants to live up to all of the hype, he can’t just trust the political instincts of his Democratic colleagues on the Hill.
Perhaps that is why he was talking so fast. When he pledged to cut spending, tackle the deficit, cut taxes, and stress more accountability in education, you know he wasn’t speaking the language of Nancy Pelosi and her liberal friends on the Hill. He wanted to get out of there before they caught on to what he was saying.
It wasn’t the greatest speech in the world, but it hit many interesting notes.
And he sure got through it fast.