The speech in many ways could have been written for, and delivered by, a man they loathe: George W. Bush. Sure the speech had the pleasant stuff about banning torture and the value of negotiations, and Obama gave a nod to Martin Luther King, whose own Nobel speech in 1964 was a paean to pacifism. But Obama wanted to make it clear that he was NOT Martin Luther King. He was a commander in chief leading two wars, confronting an implacable terrorist foe, burdened by a wobbly job rating and a dysfunctional Congress, and facing a dicey electoral future for his party in 2010 and himself in 2012.
Howard Fineman,
"Newsweek"
