I only saw about 12 seconds of the President’s speech last night.  But by all written accounts, he did a commendable job.

I would have stopped to watch it – my wife had it on in our house – but in that single glance I felt I had seen the speech 100 times.  There was the President; there were the eloquent applause queues, and there was the wildly cheering audience.

John Podhoretz had a very good piece in the New York Post today well-articulating this train of thought.

Podhoretz wonders if an audience speech may not have been the best venue for this type of message.  I find him right on that – and think back to another President’s response to the nation in pain, penned 25 years ago by Peggy Noonan and delivered by Ronald Reagan. (Reagan’s Challenger speech is posted here for those who have never seen it.)

No one I’ve seen, with the exception of Martin Luther King, can bring audiences to the heights candidate Obama did, but no one could deliver solemnity like the Gipper.

Nonetheless, from all I can gather, President Obama set just the right tone last night.  He did the nation proud.