Cheney's KO of Obama

Toby Harnden attended the Cheney speech and asks, "So who won the fight?" We already answered that, and Harnden agrees.

He's written a play-by-play of Cheney's takedown of Obama: The 10 punches Dick Cheney landed on Barack Obama's jaw. In the process he's forced us to take a closer look at Obama's speech. It's ruining our breakfast.

Obama made his speech in front of a copy of the Constitution. He assures us that he's studied it, even taught it to others. But you have to wonder what went on in those classes. To the contemporary academic mindset, it's the spirit of the document, not those dreary exact words, that matter. In my day, the teachers who encouraged baseless speculation and personal venting at the expense of close attention to the text at hand were always the most popular and got the best evaluations. Not hard to figure out why -- lots of students would rather hand in a collage instead of a research paper at the end of the term. And those content-lite classes were always taught by liberals.

Back to the speeches. Harnden notes that Obama "cloak[ed] himself in the flag, as Republicans were often criticised for doing." The speeches contrasted sharply in style:

The former veep's speech was factual and unemotional and certainly devoid of the kind of hokey, self-obsessed, campaign-style stuff like this, from Obama's address today: "I stand here today as someone whose own life was made possible by these documents. My father came to these shores in search of the promise that they offer. My mother made me rise before dawn to learn their truths when I lived as a child in a foreign land."

"My mother made me rise before dawn to learn their truths when I lived as a child in a foreign land." Savor that for a moment. His eloquence (or something) is stunning. And ponder this: someone gets paid real money to write that stuff; Obama must think it's good.

Terrible prose style aside, Obama's speeches are always, invariably about him. Why is that?

Cheney's speech might be called muscular, packed with solid facts and logical reasoning. Obama's was flaccid. One example from Mr. Harnden:

The release of the documents was a nakedly political move by Obama and Cheney called him on it. This passage from Obama's speech today came across as completely disingenuous: "I did not do this because I disagreed with the enhanced interrogation techniques that those memos authorized, and I didn't release the documents because I rejected their legal rationales -- although I do on both counts. I released the memos because the existence of that approach to interrogation was already widely known, the Bush Administration had acknowledged its existence, and I had already banned those methods."

Ooookay.

Harnden's fight metaphor highlights the fact that only one of the participants is actually throwing punches. The other uses evasion -- spin, distortions, and outright misrepresentations (ok, lies) -- to convince his listeners. Please read Harnden's piece, which wouldn't be well-served by excerpting.

Also: American Power covers the commentary. Prof. Douglas likes IBD's analysis, which also uses the boxing metaphor, and points out that this "duel" has quite inspired a certain deranged lefty.

*Update: Also see Hyacinth Girl on this.

Memorandum has tons of Cheney links, including us.

Linked by Michelle Malkin (buzzworthy)

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