Obama described, with energy and enthusiasm, a number of near-term ideals the nation could reach for, and expressed the intention to reach for them. It should be obvious even to the most miseducated rapscallion that you cannot make things better if you have no concept how things should be if they were going well. Generating a positive vision of a way forward is certainly a key part of the President's job. And Mister Obama, using common sense and a broad compassion for individual lives and struggles, is certainly doing it better than his predecessors. Parsing the individual rhetorical strokes used in a national address is kind of pesky-minded, wouldn't you say> Maybe even specious?

A