Speechless

Now that the president has delivered his address to schoolchildren across the country -- or at least some of them; many school districts, including most in Central Virginia, opted out -- perhaps the nation will regain its senses.

The speech was perfectly innocuous, and no different from one a thousand schools have heard some variation of a thousand times before. The only difference between the president's address and countless other work-hard-and-apply-yourself soporifics is that the Obama administration decided it was worth broadcasting across the country, instead of picking just one schoolhouse to inflict it upon.

It probably seemed like a harmless idea at the time.

Someone in Obama HQ should have realized it was bound to stir up the excitable elements who see in every anodyne pronouncement a sinister thread designed to weave the socialist net that will entrap us all. It wasn't anything of the sort, of course. Sometimes a speech to schoolkids is not, believe it or not, the first step toward resurrecting the Communist Youth League. Sometimes a speech is just a speech.

Yet Obama evokes more visceral hostility than any administration since -- well, the last one. Those on the left inclined to roll their eyes at the furor over the president's address might ask how they would have reacted if, say, Dick Cheney had decided to give an inspiring talk to the nation's children a few months after 9/11.

If the Obama administration could step outside the Washington bubble and observe itself from a distance, it might see that, when combined with his aggressive agenda, Obama's overexposure does carry a whiff of Our Dear Maximum Leader about it. That's what happens when you read your own (fawning) press clips. Maybe this education speech will prove to be a "teachable moment" for the president, too.