Rhetoric By Rote

Haven't I said before that I can no longer stand to listen to Obama's speeches?  They're full of glittering generalities and straw-man pseudo-arguments, and in the end, they're all sound and fury, signifying nothing, because they're empty of actual substantive policy and often spiked with ungracious potshots at his opponents.  The shiny words end up being a gilt veil for some seriously profound, divisive, self-involved cynicism.  Someone else has noticed ... and come up with this devastatingly elegant analysis of Obama's rhetoric by using his most recent speech as a case study:

Not only was Obama’s speech on Wednesday political, it was completely rote, by-the-book Obama politics. He couldn’t even bring out an interesting twist to his stock partisan speech. Here’s how it always goes, with Wednesday being no exception: 

I. Introduction of some grand narrative of American history.
II. Introduction of the policy problem, making clear that Obama had nothing to do with it.
III. Argument that the proposal of Obama’s opponents is inconsistent with that grand narrative.
IV. Argument that Obama’s proposal is consistent with that grand narrative.
V. Conclusion that Obama’s proposal is the only “American” solution to the policy problem.

*Sigh.*