Obama’s Nobel Speech

Read This Speech… Love him or not, just as a matter of substance, one has to be impressed – time and again – with Barack Obama’s ability to craft and deliver a great speech.

His latest effort, the speech to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, was a moment on the world stage that was ripe with irony. The prize for peace going to the guy who just ordered up more troops for the war in Afghanistan. An award for major accomplishment to a young president in his first year in office. Obama did what a speech coach would have counseled: he admitted the obvious and took the irony head on.

Here is some reaction: from Slate; and Dan Balz at the Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor. Even Sarah Palin said nice things.

This speech will be read for a long time to come, perhaps as the Obama Doctrine.

Not since Ronald Reagan, who Obama noticed in the speech, has a president been this gifted as a communicator.