You can read credible live-blogging of El Presidente's SOTU here and here, or pro-blogger style by Andrew Sullivan here. How odd that no one's rushing YouTuber clips to their sites. Nobody really cares what he has to say anymore. He's not our leader, except by fiat. What an odd moment in the history of America.
It's actually easier to find James Adomian and UCB crew's pre-emptive SOTU strike that seems to have popped up the very day of the address, with his brilliant prediction of Bushian rhetoric and delivery. The capper is the Democratic response by two comics playing Hillary and Obama, climaxing with her parodist screaming, "You will not touch me! You will not touch me! No one will touch me! No one will touch me!"
The real Democratic response was another matter, and those who might cringe at memories of milquetoast donkey rebuttals past finally got their due with Sen. Webb's response.
You owe it to yourself and your country to check this out.
Per Jonathan Singer:
I would concur with the sentiment of Chris Matthews, who opined that, perhaps for the first time since Ed Muskie delivered the Democratic address in 1970, the opposition response was stronger than the President's own state of the union address.
Per Sullivan:
He managed to bridge economic populism with military service and pride: a very potent combination. He did so with a sense of responsibility. The message, in short: "Lead us toward responsible redeployment in Iraq - or get out of the way." And he said it with testosterone and authority - more authority than this president now has.
And Josh Marshall is more interested in videoblogging Webb's response than the SOTU itself.
You may remember that these two elected officials crossed swords the first time they met in D.C. in November, over Bush asking about Webb's Marine lance corporal son serving in Iraq, and His Petulance not getting a response he wanted to hear:
Webb responded that he really wanted to see his son brought back home, said a person who heard about the exchange from Webb.
"I didn'’t ask you that, I asked how he's doing," Bush retorted, according to the source.
Payback's a bitch, you and everyone knows it. So does El Presidente feel the Senator, a military hero, novelist and historian, breathing down his neck?
Webb's closing paragraph, after references as positive leadership models Republican Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, then drives in the stake:
"These presidents took the right kind of action for the benefit of the American people and for the health of our relations around the world. Tonight, we are calling on this president to take similar action in both areas. If he does, we will join him. If he does not, we will be showing him the way."
What it all comes down to, between the twice-elected President and the newly-elected junior Senator...
Which one seems like a leader?
As always, Politi-flicks is cross-posted to The Daily Reel.
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