Most of his main arguments have been made before--not just by Obama himself, but by his predecessor. "Today I'd like to speak directly to the people across the broader Middle East," George W. Bush said at the United Nations on September 16, 2006. Full Story »
Posted by Derek Hawkins - via New Republic
This shows that there are stark similarities between Obama's speech in Cairo today and Bush's speech before the UN in 2006. It states the obvious in an effective way: Obama's reputation and political resume gave his words a level of sincerity and weight that by 2006 Bush couldn't have hoped for. It probably didn't take a lot to come up with this piece, but I haven't seen anyone else making the same remarks.
. There is no novel way to restate the obvious reason for this: Obama is not Bush. He speaks without a foreign invasion on his resume, and with a reputation for honesty and decency. He writes and speaks on a higher intellectual and rhetorical level than Bush. (Today’s speech, of which he was said to be the primary author, may have been his best piece of writing yet.)
