THE "IT STUNK, BUT I'M SUPPOSED TO HAVE LOVED IT" SCHOOL OF ANALYSIS:

No More Mr. Eloquent (SIMON SCHAMA, 1/20/09, Daily Beast)

Did it soar? Did the pilot lift America and the rest of the watching world into a better place by the sheer thrust of his rhetorical engines? No, not exactly. Maybe there was ice on the wings of Obama’s prose, and not just deposited by the knife-slicing January cold. The chill was more a matter of mood: his and the country’s at a moment of unparalleled crisis. So there was no sugar-coating; not much in the way of head-patting and lullabies. What there was instead was great seriousness of tone and substance; the integrity that comes from telling it like it is; a feeling that the time was too tough for cheap lyrics.

Stop shoveling, he's buried.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 20, 2009 6:59 PM