Harking back to Nixon-Kennedy debate days, I heard The Speech on radio and so I judged it exclusively on content. It was mediocre. There seemed to be a designated clapper in the crowd who sparked the applause in Pavlovian, mob-psychological fashion. It was a mere laundry list of proposed spending programs for every conceivable Democratic special interest group. For example, when the President spoke of the federal government investing in infrastructure, I read that as a gift to the unions, which exist almost exclusively in government and in industries which serve the government. Unions are basically dead in the free market since the bosses (the consumers) don’t want to pay high prices for poor quality products. The best part of the speech was his excellency’s ode to the private company that saved the Chilean miners. It had nothing to do with the rest of his speech, however.

The Best of James Ostrowski