MISAPPREHENDING THE MAN:

[O]ne might have expected the President to follow such a stark statement with specifics on how he will approach the big decisions on that list of issues that he ticked off. Instead, the policy portion of the speech was oddly parochial and sounded like it had baked a little too long in the oven of the Obama campaign's polling shop. On energy policy, Obama promised to "support more than six hundred thousand new jobs in natural gas alone." On education, he said that he would "recruit a hundred thousand math and science teachers within ten years." And on dealing with the looming fiscal crisis, he made a vague promise to "reach an agreement based on the principles of my bipartisan debt commission."

It's a worthy laundry list of promises, but if there is a unifying idea behind this basket of aspirations, I missed it. I hear all the time, but don't really know for sure, that the mythical undecided voters that both campaigns chase are not particularly ideological--if they were, they would have already decided between the candidates--and that they clamor for these sorts of statements that include specific and quantifiable goals.

But the list leaves a lot to wonder about.

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