"Barack Hussein Obama’s Deal with Iran... was an easy, beautiful, smooth road to a Nuclear Weapon, which Iran would have had six years ago..."

"... and would have used long before now. My Agreement with Iran is the exact opposite, A WALL TO NO NUCLEAR WEAPON! In fact, they no longer want a Nuclear Weapon, nor will they have one, either through purchase, development, or any other form of procurement. The Deal is scheduled to get signed tomorrow, and immediately after it is signed, the Hormuz Strait is OPEN TO ALL."

Writes Trump, at Truth Social.

We've heard so many times that the deal is about to be signed, so generally I resist blogging about it. I'll believe it when I see it. But "The Deal is scheduled to get signed tomorrow" sounds more definite, doesn't it? Weasel word: "scheduled."

Trump continues: "Our relationship with Iran is a much different and better one than previous Administrations have had.

"[Trump] said he would be willing to negotiate but that if Iran was not serious, he would order an overwhelming military attack."

"He did give diplomacy a chance, but ultimately, he was not willing to simply put a fresh coat of paint on Obama’s disastrous nuclear deal; he wanted serious indications that Iran was committing to giving up its quest for a nuclear weapon. When it was clear they were not, he followed through on his threat. Many past presidents have said that 'all options are on the table' with regard to Iran. Trump meant it...."

Writes Philip Klein in "Donald Trump Wasn’t Bluffing on Iran" (National Review).

From the comments over there: "How Barack Obama must feel now, having tried sucking up to the Ayatollah, then bribing him (as did Biden later), and now finally realizing, after mocking Trump and denouncing Trump and lying about Trump, that the president who will be remembered as being truly consequential, is Trump. Sleep well, President Obama. Trump got him."

Which causes another commenter to quote this:

"When do we send them an airmail message?"

Question answered: February 28, 2026.

Nearly 20 years later.

"If a belligerent state launched 186 explosive drones, 36 cruise missiles, and 110 surface-to-surface missiles from three fronts against civilian targets within the United States..."

"... would Joe Biden call it a 'win'? Would the president tell us that the best thing we can do now is show 'restraint'? What if that same terror state’s proxy armies had recently helped murder, rape, and kidnap more than 1,000 American men, women, and children? What if this terror state were trying to obtain nuclear weapons so it could continue to agitate without any consequences?"

Asks David Harsanyi, in "The World Is Paying A Deadly Price For Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy Legacy" (The Federalist).

"Why did Obama go soft on Russia? My opinion is that it was because he was singularly focused on the nuclear deal with Iran."

"Obama wanted Putin in the deal, and to stand up to him on election interference would have, in Obama's estimation, upset that negotiation. This turned out to be a disastrous policy decision."

From "Mueller's report looks bad for Obama" by Scott Jennings.

That's at CNN, which tells us, "Scott Jennings, a CNN contributor, is a former special assistant to President George W. Bush and former campaign adviser to Sen. Mitch McConnell... The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own" and directs us to "View more opinion articles on CNN." At that link, you can see how the "looks bad for Obama" story is balanced. Here's my screen capture:

f

"Pres. Trump says he's 'ready to meet' with Iran 'anytime they want to' and says there would be 'no preconditions.'"

Pres. Trump says he's "ready to meet" with Iran "anytime they want to" and says there would be "no preconditions."

"I would certainly meet with Iran if they wanted to meet. I don't know that they're ready yet, they're having a hard time right now." https://t.co/5LhyfYAB1q pic.twitter.com/gAo4edtWNR

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) July 30, 2018

I'm seeing lots of reactions like this:

Trump, asked whether he'll meet with the president of Iran, says he'll meet with any leader without preconditions.

Republicans, at one point, attacked President Obama for saying he would meet with the president of Iran without preconditions.

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 30, 2018

But I'd just like to say:

1. Trump is like Obama in many ways. Not in all ways, obviously, but click my "Trump is like Obama" tag for more examples of this phenomenon.

2. I remember when Obama made his statement that he'd meet "without preconditions" with Iran (and  Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea). It wasn't when Obama was vying with the GOP candidate. It was in July 2007, when he was fighting to distinguish himself in the field of Democratic candidates in this debate:



It wasn't Republicans that got on his case! It was Hillary Clinton and her supporters. Here's what I wrote at the time which makes it crushingly clear the opposition to Obama was about Hillary:

"The president’s tweet merits Four Pinocchios, although we may revise this ruling if any corroborating evidence emerges."

Hmm. That's a strange approach to fact-checking at The Washington Post. Isn't the President in a position to know whether Obama's Iran deal included a grant of U.S. citizenship to 2,500 Iranian officials? Why would WaPo need more evidence to stop it from going all 4 Pinocchios?

Trump’s claim appears to have originated with Mojtaba Zonnour [an Iranian cleric who opposes the deal].... Trump said the Obama administration granted citizenship to 2,500 Iranians during the JCPOA negotiations, including government officials, but Zonnour’s claim is somewhat different....

The White House did not respond to our request for comment. The Homeland Security and State departments didn’t answer our questions.

We asked Ben Rhodes, who was a key figure in the Iran deal negotiations and deputy national security adviser to Obama, whether it was accurate to claim that 2,500 Iranians were given U.S. citizenship or green cards during the JCPOA negotiations.

“I have never heard that figure before,” Rhodes said. “It is certainly the case that it was not part of the Iran deal.”

Rhodes's statement sounds cagey! He just hasn't heard "that figure." Has he heard some other figure or heard about it but without a specific figure? And "It is certainly the case that it was not part of the Iran deal" could just mean that it was a side deal not intended to be seen by the public. And then, too, Rhodes could be lying. Why no Pinocchios for him? Why not 4 Pinocchios, subject to revision if any corroborating evidence emerges? There is this additional support rustled up for Rhodes (and attempts at getting support for Trump were not responded to):

“This is not something that would have been negotiated without it being super public at the time,” [a senior Obama administration officials who had authority over immigration matters said to Fact Checker]. “There’s no question that Iranians were coming to the U.S. as refugees, and they have been for a long time. There are high levels of political and religious persecution in Iran. We may have brought in some refugees that were government officials of some level. But somebody who was a government official would be subject to a very high level of scrutiny and in most cases would be barred from entering because of the connection to the regime....

“I have never heard any reference to this claim previously,” [said said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution]. “Frankly, if there is a single speck of truth to this, I’d be shocked.”...

The top-ranked comment at WaPo: "If trump says it, you know immediately that it is false. Very false. Bigly false. Yet, I would rather have 2500 Iranians in America than 1 trump."

"Iran confirmed on Wednesday that it recently conducted a missile test..."

"... but it rejected accusations from the United States that the launch had violated a United Nations Security Council resolution...."

The remarks came a day after President Hassan Rouhani disparaged President Trump for his immigration order barring refugees, as well as citizens of seven predominantly-Muslim countries including Iran.

“Banning visas for other nations is the act of newcomers to the political scene,” Mr. Rouhani said.

UPDATE: National security adviser Michael Flynn said:

"President Trump has severely criticized the various agreements reached between Iran and the Obama Administration, as well as the United Nations, as being weak and ineffective. Instead of being thankful to the United States for these agreements, Iran is now feeling emboldened. As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice.... The Obama Administration failed to respond adequately to Tehran’s malign actions—including weapons transfers, support for terrorism, and other violations of international norms."

As Nixon put it: "When the president does it, that means it is not illegal."

I'm reading "Obama’s Cash Payment to Iran Was More Than a Ransom — It Broke Criminal Law," by Andrew C. McCarthy in The National Review.

At a press conference Thursday, Obama remarkably explained, “The reason that we had to give them cash is precisely because we are so strict in maintaining sanctions and we do not have a banking relationship with Iran.” Really Mr. President? The whole point of sanctions is to prohibit and punish certain behavior. If you — especially you, Mr. President — do the precise thing that the sanctions prohibit, that is a strange way of being “so strict in maintaining” them....

By his own account, President Obama engaged in the complex cash transfer in order to end-run sanctions that prohibit the U.S. from having “a banking relationship with Iran.” The point of the sanctions is not to prevent banking with Iran; it is to prevent Iran from getting value from or through our financial system — the banking prohibition is a corollary. And the point of sanctions, if you happen to be the president of the United States sworn to execute the laws faithfully, is to follow them — not pat yourself on the back for keeping them in place while you willfully evade them. The president’s press conference is better understood as a confession than an explanation.

"Is it the policy of the State Department, where the preservation or the secrecy of secret negotiations is concerned, to lie in order to achieve that goal?"

"James, I think there are times where diplomacy needs privacy in order to progress. This is a good example of that."

A Q&A from 2013 that's the subject of "It wasn’t a ‘glitch’: State Department deliberately cut embarrassing questions from press briefing video." (Link goes to The Washington Post.)

"He referred to the American foreign-policy establishment as the Blob."

"According to Rhodes" — Ben Rhodes, "The Aspiring Novelist Who BecameObama’s Foreign-Policy Guru" — "the Blob includes Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates and other Iraq-war promoters from both parties who now whine incessantly about the collapse of the American security order in Europe and the Middle East.... Barack Obama is not a standard-issue liberal Democrat. He openly shares Rhodes’s contempt for the groupthink of the American foreign-policy establishment and its hangers-on in the press. Yet one problem with the new script that Obama and Rhodes have written is that the Blob may have finally caught on...."

Commenting on that long NYT piece: Thomas E. Ricks in Foreign policy:

Rhodes comes off like a real asshole. This is not a matter of politics — I have voted for Obama twice. Nor do I mind Rhodes’s contempt for many political reporters: “Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”

But, as that quote indicates, he comes off like an overweening little schmuck. This quotation seems to capture his worldview: “He referred to the American foreign policy establishment as the Blob. According to Rhodes, the Blob includes Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, and other Iraq-war promoters from both parties who now whine incessantly about the collapse of the American security order in Europe and the Middle East.” Blowing off Robert Gates takes nerve.

Lee Smith in The Weekly Standard: 

[David] Samuels's profile is an amazing piece of writing about the Holden Caulfield of American foreign policy. He's a sentimental adolescent with literary talent (Rhodes published one short story before his mother's connections won him a job in the world of foreign policy), and high self regard, who thinks that everyone else is a phony. Those readers who found Jeffrey Goldberg's picture of Obama in his March Atlantic profile refreshing for the president's willingness to insult American allies publicly will be similarly cheered here by Rhodes's boast of deceiving American citizens, lawmakers, and allies over the Iran deal. Conversely, those who believe Obama risked American interests to take a cheap shot at allies from the pedestal of the Oval Office will be appalled to see Rhodes dancing in the end zone to celebrate the well-packaged misdirections and even lies—what Rhodes and others call a "narrative"—that won Obama his signature foreign policy initiative.

Jack Shafer in Politico:

Rhodes deserves his castigation. You don’t claim that the “average reporter” you talk to is 27 years old and they “literally know nothing” without suffering some blow-back. You don’t dismiss the American foreign policy establishment—including Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, and editors and reporters at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the New Yorker—as “the Blob,” and expect polite applause in response. And you especially don’t brag about leading a “war room” effort to turn arms-control experts and reporters into sock puppets, or admit to creating a false narrative about the Iranian nuclear deal to sell it to the public, as Rhodes does, without expecting return fire.

Obama doubles down on his comparison between Iranian hardliners and Republicans who oppose his Iran deal.

"'What I said is absolutely true, factually,' Obama told CNN's Fareed Zakaria in an interview that will air in full Sunday."

"The truth of the matter is, inside of Iran, the people most opposed to the deal are the Revolutionary Guard, the Quds Force, hardliners who are implacably opposed to any cooperation with the international community... The reason that Mitch McConnell and the rest of the folks in his caucus who opposed this jumped out and opposed this before they even read it, before it was even posted, is reflective of a ideological commitment not to get a deal done. In that sense they do have much more in common with the hardliners who are much more satisfied with the status quo."

Was he asked about Chuck Schumer? Or was that interview recorded before — as the NYT put it — "Senator Chuck Schumer, the most influential Jewish voice in Congress, said Thursday night that he would oppose President Obama’s deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program":

“Advocates on both sides have strong cases for their point of view that cannot simply be dismissed,” Mr. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said in a lengthy statement. “This has made evaluating the agreement a difficult and deliberate endeavor, and after deep study, careful thought and considerable soul-searching, I have decided I must oppose the agreement and will vote yes on a motion of disapproval.”

What do you think of the Times's qualifier "the most influential Jewish voice in Congress"? I was a bit stunned.

The headline there is: "Chuck Schumer Opposes Iran Nuclear Deal, Shaking Democratic Firewall." So there was a "firewall." That "firewall" protected Obama as he doubled down on the idea that only Republicans oppose the deal — it's a partisan thing. Those terrible Republicans! They're like death-to-America Iranian hardliners.

And then along comes Chuck, screwing up the big man's polemic. What to do now? Point out that Schumer's Jewish??!

"Just because Iranian hardliners chant 'Death to America' does not mean that that’s what all Iranians believe."

"In fact, it’s those hardliners who are most comfortable with the status quo. It’s those hardliners chanting 'Death to America' who have been most opposed to the deal. They’re making common cause with the Republican Caucus."

Said President Obama.

"And so really the only argument you can make against the verification and inspection mechanism that we’ve put forward is that Iran is so intent on obtaining a nuclear weapon that no inspection regime and no verification mechanism would be sufficient..."

"... because they’d find some way to get around it because they're untrustworthy. And if that's your view, then we go back to the choice that you have to make earlier.  That means, presumably, that you can't negotiate.  And what you're really saying is, is that you've got to apply military force to guarantee that they don't have a nuclear program.  And if somebody wants to make that debate — whether it’s the Republican leadership, or Prime Minister Netanyahu, or the Israeli Ambassador or others, they're free to make it.  But it’s not persuasive."

The President's press conference.

Obama's Iran deal.

Announced this morning.

In 18 consecutive days of talks here, American officials said, the United States secured major restrictions on the amount of nuclear fuel that Iran can keep in its stockpile for the next 15 years. It will require Iran to reduce its current stockpile of low enriched uranium by 98 percent, most likely by shipping much of it to Russia.

That measure, combined with a two-thirds reduction in the number of centrifuges spinning at Iran’s primary enrichment center at Natanz, would extend to a year the amount of time it would take Iran to make enough material for a bomb should it abandon the accord and race for a weapon — what officials call “breakout time.”

But American officials acknowledged that after the first decade, the breakout time would begin to shrink. It was unclear how rapidly, because Iran’s longer-term plans to expand its enrichment capability, using a new generation of centrifuges, will be kept confidential by the Iranian government, international inspectors and the other parties to the accord.

The answer to the question I had that was the reason why I was refraining from writing about that Tom Cotton Iran letter.

I couldn't understand the nature of the controversy without knowing whether the letter was actually sent to Iran, and I read a bunch of articles about the letter without seeing an answer. Finally, this National Review headline popped up: "The Cotton Letter Was Not Sent Anywhere, Especially Not to Iran."

It was just an essay in the familiar (if not trite) form of an "open letter." It's a rhetorical device that assumes a point of view, as if X is talking to Y. We can criticize the form and the content.

As content, it undercuts (or seems to undercut) what the President seems to be trying to do. I don't know what the President is really doing with respect to Iran, but I am observing what Iran is doing (being allowed/encouraged to do?) in Iraq. Members of Congress undercut the President sometimes, and having lived through the Vietnam era, I'm no going to say they should shut up entirely, but there is a line and we could argue about when it is crossed. I'd say Harry Reid went too far when he said "This war is lost."

But let's talk about the form. The form was great at getting attention, possibly too much attention. And speaking of attention, I don't think the letter is too well-written. The word "attention" is repeated in the first 2 sentences, and not in a good way. In an inattentive way. "It has come to our attention... we are writing to bring to your attention...." That comes across as pompous officialese, like something from a bill collector or from a lawyer who's trying to scare you into ceasing and desisting from something or other.

The letter proceeds to offer legal advice in an oversimplified and puzzling way. An executive agreement is only an executive agreement and will be regarded as an executive agreement. Yes, and? It's something the next president can "revoke... with a stroke of the pen." Style note: Get rid of any unintentional rhymes, especially when you're trying to sound all official and pompous.

The closing sentence features pretty words — "We hope this letter enriches your knowledge... and promotes mutual understanding and clarity...." Hope, knowledge, understanding, and clarity. Isn't this the standard move in letters from bill collectors and lawyers? End with a few nice words about going forward in a positive way?

I hope this blog post has enriched your knowledge and understanding as we move forward into the future.

Tom Cotton has "no regrets" because "if the president and the secretary of state were intent on driving a hard bargain, they would be able to point to this letter and say, they're right."

"When past senators like Joe Biden or Jesse Helms communicated directly with foreign leaders, past presidents, like Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, did just that. The fact that President Obama doesn't see this letter as a way to get more leverage at the negotiating table just underscores that he is not negotiating for the hardest deal possible. He's negotiating a deal that is going to put Iran on the path to a bomb, if not today or tomorrow, then 10 years from now."

On "Face the Nation" this morning.

"In an implicit challenge to President Obama, Mr. Netanyahu told a joint meeting of Congress that Iran’s 'tentacles of terror' were already clutching Israel..."

"... and that failing to stop Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons 'could well threaten the survival of my country.'"

The deal Mr. Obama seeks will not prevent a nuclear-armed Iran, he said, but “will all but guarantee” it.

“We must all stand together to stop Iran’s march of conquest, subjugation and terror,” Mr. Netanyahu told the lawmakers, who responded with repeated standing ovations.

"Iran is not your ally. Iran is not your friend. Iran is your enemy. It's not your partner. Iran is committed to the destruction of Israel."

Said Benjamin Netanyahu on "Face the Nation" this morning.

"This is not a friend, neither in the battle against ISIS nor in the great effort that should be made to deprive him of the capacity to make nuclear weapons. Don't fall for Iran's ruse, they are not your friend," Netanyahu said.

Over on "Meet the Press" this morning, Chris Matthews was going on about how Obama needed to meet with John Boehner and really pressure him, ask him — "in public... on television" — "What is your opposition to this immigration bill? Is it we don't have enough enforcement? I'll give you more enforcement. Is it hiring rules? We're going to enforce them. I promise you we're going to enforce them. What do you want? So you're absolutely against any kind of amnesty for people who have been here 20, 30 years, absolutely against it? So what then when the president issues the executive order, people will understand he really tried to negotiate. Let me tell you something, we're negotiating with Tehran right now. We're desperately trying to cut a deal over nuclear weapons to the last moment. Why don't we have negotiations going on right now between the two sides?"

Chuck Todd brings him up short:  "You know... I can hear Republicans now echoing, he'll negotiate with the Iranians, he won't negotiate with us on immigration."

Matthews (clearly upset): "That's not the way I said it."

Todd: "No, I'm telling you how you're going to get requoted.... that's how he's going to get requoted."

Matthews: "But they want to negotiate though, Chuck." They, that is, Iran.

Now, go back to the top and read what Netanyahu said.

10 things I might have live-blogged, if I'd blogged the State of the Union Address last night.

1. Most memorable line: "Are you going to have sex with me or do I have to rape you?" That's a paraphrase. Let me get the actual quote from the text. Obama said he had "a set of concrete, practical proposals," and "Some require congressional action, and I’m eager to work with all of you. But America does not stand still, and neither will I. So wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation... that’s what I’m going to do."

2. The inanity of the congressional dress-up. Is every woman wearing bright red? As Obama squeezes in down the aisle, the backdrop of red looks like an array of military personnel from some European country, but it's just the congresswomen, bulging into the aisles. Of course, military personnel would clear a path, not make it more difficult for The Commander to walk by. The congressmen are less showily dressed. What choice do they have? If a male member wore anything other than a dark, neutral color, you'd think he's lost his mind, but the women seem to think they can't look crazy. "Shirley Temple is there," I said, spotting Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and being unfair to Shirley Temple, whose ringlets — as I do an image search this morning — look artlessly subtle and not at all like Debbie's headful of boing-y springs. Incredible what women can do to themselves and still be taken seriously. Respect the women! You'd better. Or else!

3. Obama kept kissing women. No selfies were taken, but what's with kissing so many women? "He should kiss some men," I said, and not because he's The First Gay President. He should kiss some men to establish that the kissing isn't sexual.

4. Meade announced "He looks high." I glanced up from the iPad game I was playing for the purpose of paying attention — solitaire — and noted the heavily drooping eyelids, then returned to my listen-only mode, with the audio in the room augmented by Meade's intermittent outbursts on the Obama-is-high theme, which fit the text, in ways that perhaps point #5 will make you see. If you're high. And, no, Obama said nothing last night about legalizing marijuana. And, also, Althouse and Meade were not high, not both of us or either of us. We were already talking and laughing as if we were. Artificial enhancement might tip us over into crying and despair.

5. Instead of talking about the government and anything related to his job or Congress's job, Obama begins by telling us about one American character after another, each described with irrelevant specificity. "An entrepreneur flipped on the lights in her tech startup...." Who the hell cares that the light was "flipped" on? Are we supposed to flip on with the excitement of your action verb "flipped"? This is why I don't read pulp novels. Characters continually commit actions that create a picture in your head, but it's always a dumb picture — flicking on light switches — and these details don't matter, don't connect to any meaning the author has to give. It's the opposite of turning on light. I can imagine the speechwriter deluding himself into thinking that this picture would somehow intrigue us, but it makes us feel that our time is being wasted. "An autoworker fine-tuned some of the best, most fuel-efficient cars in the world..." There's zero pretense that anybody checked to see if there really was that guy — "today in America" — doing exactly that. It's detail that is really the absence of detail. We're swimming in bullshit. "A man took the bus home from the graveyard shift, bone-tired" — no one noticed "bone" next to "grave"?! — "but dreaming big dreams for his son" — a deliberate allusion to Obama's autobiography title? I know he's trying to say This Is America. Like that's going to open us up for the paragraphs of policy that we know lie ahead.

6. The characters are more real when they're present in the room, like "Misty DeMars... a mother of two young boys." Okay, they really did find a person to represent this generality, and she's undeniably real. She's right there. But what does it mean that one particular lady got insurance? It's all worthwhile — all the clusterfuck of Obamacare — because Misty DeMars got insurance? And there's Estiven Rodriguez. Something about education happened to him, so that must mean something. I forget what. We got distracted by the way Obama's said "Rodriguez" — close to "Rod Regrets."

7. It's late, and we got tired, and we're on Central Time. I felt a little sorry for all those 50 and 60ish Congressfolk having to act excited that late at night. We were watching the speech on TV, and then I got it streaming on the mini-iPad, and we got in bed, each reading on iPads, while the mini, between us, blabbed on. Do those Congressfolk feel they're enjoying rare privilege, or do they wish they could be in bed too? I notice none of them seem to be wearing glasses, but they must need glasses, which means they are all wearing contact lenses. That must feel awful that late at night.

8. So much clapping. Clapping is quite an annoying noise, and this clapping happens and is going to happen so regularly, so exaggeratedly. The time-wastage is a constant, nagging presence. The speech is literally claptrap. Our legislative branch is trapped into clapping. At least the Democratic side. The judicial branch is represented, but they're trapped into not clapping. I see Roberts, Kennedy, and Kagan. (Kagan glowed red when Obama greeted her at the beginning.) I don't see Scalia, who once called the State of the Union "a juvenile spectacle" and said: "I resent being called upon to give it dignity…. It’s really not appropriate for the justices to be there." I, too, resent being called upon to give it dignity, not that anyone's calling on me, and I wonder if it's "appropriate" for a law professor to blog the SOTU into the indignity it deserves. Am I saying anything properly legal? If you don't think so, reread point #1 and dig the dignity of the lawprof blogger's concision.

9. With all the applause made the absence of applause stunning at the end the last thing he said about Iran. I said: "Wow!" at the time and made a mental note to check the text in the morning. It's: "If Iran’s leaders do not seize this opportunity, then I will be the first to call for more sanctions and stand ready to exercise all options to make sure Iran does not build a nuclear weapon. But if Iran’s leaders do seize the chance — and we’ll know soon enough — then Iran could take an important step to rejoin the community of nations, and we will have resolved one of the leading security challenges of our time without the risks of war."

10. The speech that began with a string of generically specific American characters ends with a long tribute to one character, present in the gallery, an Army Ranger named Cory Remsburg. He's already been on camera numerous times because he's sitting next to Michelle Obama (who, by the way, is wearing something that seems halfway between a 1950s little girl's party dress and an enlarged insect's carapace). There can be no dissent from solemn respect for Cory Remsburg, but are we to be bamboozled into thinking there can be no disrespect for this speech? Why is the President using Cory Remsburg as his shield from criticism, as he creaks to the end of this spectacle? Maybe everyone's so tired and so desirous of an end that we will be swept up into this it-must-be-the-last story — The Story of Cory — after which the applause must be so long and thunderous — because it must be bigger and louder than any of all the previous applauses — that we will have forgotten everything, as we dissolve into Dreams From My President.

But it's morning now, and I have the text. I can read where he bounced off the Army Ranger. Cory embodies the will and strength to fight back. It's not easy. "Sometimes we stumble; we make mistakes; we get frustrated or discouraged." Obama has stumbled and made mistakes, not that he directly admits it. Look there: It's Cory. But Cory didn't stumble and make mistakes. He did his duty, got injured, and kept going, doing what he, individually, needed to do. But he is appropriated to symbolize The People as a Whole. America as an entity moves forward: We have "placed our collective shoulder to the wheel of progress." The dismal old cliché put your shoulder to the wheel gets tricked up with the lefty words "collective" and "progress," and the workmanlike action verb "put" becomes the never-did-a-day-of-manual-labor word "placed." And now, we've gotta get out of this place, back into our individual lives, and I don't want to be in your collective, I'm tired of your "progress," and I've got my own wheels.