KICKED INTO THE GUTTER, STILL LOOKING AT THE STARS

I give President Obama a bit more credit than others do for the speech last night -- yes, it's infuriating to be asked to "turn the page," and yes, he gave a shout-out to George W. Bush ... but there was still a tiny bit of fight left in the president, which is more than I thought there was:

... A war to disarm a state became a fight against an insurgency. Terrorism and sectarian warfare threatened to tear Iraq apart. Thousands of Americans gave their lives; tens of thousands have been wounded. Our relations abroad were strained. Our unity at home was tested....

Ending this war is not only in Iraq's interest- it is in our own. The United States has paid a huge price to put the future of Iraq in the hands of its people. We have sent our young men and women to make enormous sacrifices in Iraq, and spent vast resources abroad at a time of tight budgets at home....

Subtle -- too subtle -- but, within the conventions of this sort of thing, harsher than I expected. Given their delicate sensibilities, I'm surprised right-wingers aren't calling these passages "graceless," Bush shout-out or no.

But to me the unsettling thing about the speech was the fact that it was aspirational in a way that came off as daydreamy and naive in these circumstances. I'm not surprised that the president said that the wasted dollars in Iraq could have been better spent on domestic needs (and yes, I wished he'd come to the same conclusion about the Afghan war) -- but he talked almost as if the recession doesn't exist, as if job creation isn't, by far, our most pressing need right now. He looked right past what America is focused on, talking much more about a wish list most of us can't imagine him getting to any time soon, if ever:

... For too long, we have put off tough decisions on everything from our manufacturing base to our energy policy to education reform. As a result, too many middle class families find themselves working harder for less, while our nation’s long-term competitiveness is put at risk....

Our most urgent task is to restore our economy, and put the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs back to work. To strengthen our middle class, we must give all our children the education they deserve, and all our workers the skills that they need to compete in a global economy. We must jumpstart industries that create jobs, and end our dependence on foreign oil. We must unleash the innovation that allows new products to roll off our assembly lines, and nurture the ideas that spring from our entrepreneurs. This will be difficult. But in the days to come, it must be our central mission as a people, and my central responsibility as President....

Energy policy? Education reform? America is screaming, Just help me get a damn job!

There was a way to make these points that would have seemed more responsive to the national mood: link the waste of the Iraq war to our immediate economic needs, then, rhetorically, walk listeners through this crisis to a future when we address the other problems.

But that's not how Obama's thinking. The speech suggests that he hasn't really wrestled with the Great Recession not because he's a heartless centrist in love with the plutocracy, but because he still thinks his ambitious, multi-pronged agenda from the '08 campaign is the solution to our economic problems. And, yes, our economy is a creaky old house, and his ambitious remodeling projects would have the effect of making it more structurally sound -- but the immediate problem is that the roof has blown off, and you solve that by, well, replacing the damn roof. He still doesn't seem to understand that.