I have little doubt that the unexpectedly strident opposition to the President's speech to America's schoolkids made Team Obama take a red pencil to the original script -- and thus produced a better overall speech, one that would be less offensive and less politically charged.We know, for instance, that the original plan called for the kids to write letters to Obama, telling him how they were going to help him achieve his goals. But the "Whoa! Hold on there, partner" that came from the Right forced that particularly weird element to be dropped. In the same way, the news that many schools wouldn't broadcast the speech, that parents were taking their kids from school, and that boogeymen like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity were eagerly waiting for tidbits from the speech they could make hay with, certainly made the President much more circumspect in his choice of words.
That's good. Even an incurable narcissist like Barack Obama was forced to tune it down a bit. And even though it remained an egoistic venture (Obama used the word "I" 56 times in the thing), it turned out pretty good. Wash your hands; do your homework; dream big -- those kinds of things.
It was a political action, of course. But because of the response of the Right (who have learned just how manipulative Barack Obama is and how loose he is with truth), it was effectively countered. End result? A pleasant (if somewhat condescending and boring) speech from the President and a very effective check by the opposition on what Obama had planned as a slick PR move.
And oh yeah, Moms all over the country can now refer to presidential authority when trying to get their kids to wash up before dinner.
