Inauguration speeches

I finally got a chance to watch Obama's inauguration speech (I don't think I would be able to stomach the rest of the ceremony) and I give it a resounding 'meh'. It sounded like a stump speech, and not even one of his better ones. Granted, Obama's stump speeches are better than the majority of speeches ever given, but this inauguration speech isn't even in the same league as Kennedy's in 1961. Hearing it still gives me goosebumps. Everyone knows the 'ask not what your country can do for you,' line, but when you hear the build up it gets exponentially better.



(Seriously, give it a listen; it's only fourteen minutes.)

Update: This article makes me feel better about Obama's speech. It made me realize that the speech was brilliant, if not particularly inspiring to me, because it wasn't talking to liberals. Obama used the language of conservatism to try to get conservatives behind liberal ideas, which will be essential if they are to be enacted. The best example of this was the "These things are old; these things are true" line, which resonates for conservatives in a big big way, but among the 'traditional' values he listed were tolerance and curiosity, the latter of which in particular seems pretty damn radical after the quarter century of Republican leadership and completely antithetical to Bush II in particular.