JONATHAN BERNSTEIN: Trump's self-congratulatory State of the Union speech
'Presidents usually struggle to rise above this annual occasion even if they are good at soaring - and soaring is not Trump's strength as a public speaker'
This was a long, long, long State of the Union speech. It was heavy on traumatic stories of guests in the gallery, and light - in most cases, extremely light - on the policies that would turn words into action. As a piece of rhetoric, Trump's speech was dull, albeit no duller than most State of the Union speeches. Presidents usually struggle to rise above this annual occasion even if they are good at soaring - and soaring is not Trump's strength as a public speaker. It stood out mostly for the repeated invocation of grim stories about Trump's guests in the gallery. I took it to be mawkish attempts to recapture a memorable moment from his first speech to Congress. I wasn't the only one: To be fair, this is probably a matter of taste. Presidents have steadily escalated this sort of thing ever since Ronald Reagan blazed the trail, though his approach was smaller in scale and far more uplifting way. As far as the speech's substance? After all, the process of creating and delivering th...
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