THE SPEECH - AT 7:52 A.M. ET:  In journalism they call this the second-day angle.  What more is there to say about the president's speech?

I don't think there'll be too many second thoughts about the speech.  Obama is not a subtle speaker, nor a particularly provocative one.  You don't feel the urge to re-read his speeches for some hidden meaning or brilliant point that you may have missed.  It's all up front, usually, and last night was no exception, in two to three times the number of words that were necessary.

On balance, it was a generally good speech, as far as it went.  Mr. Obama described problems in the health-care system that most Americans, including conservatives agree on.  His villain was the insurance companies, and, yes, some of the practices he described must be reformed - like canceling coverage for people who get sick, or denying claims because of minor errors on insurance applications.

And I suspect that a bill will emerge that will be aimed at some of the more sordid practices we see today.

But details were missing, as they usually are.  Paying for the president's program remained a vague mystery.  Tort reform, which the president mentioned, was dismissed with a promise of some experimental programs.  (In other words, the trial lawyers can rest easy for a time.)  The guiding principles were fine, the mechanism was only a sketch on an architect's bench, without the plumbing or power put in.

How will the American people react?  I suspect the president will get a bump in the polls that will last for a week.  Then we'll be back to zero.  The doubters were given no reason last night not to doubt further.  There was no clear breakthrough, no moment of clarity where the picture of the president's program was defined with precision. 

Let me also point out one outrage:  As usual, Mr. Obama could not avoid his awful tendency to slap his predecessor.  (He would have been wiser to quote some of President Bush's better lines on compassionate conservatism.  He should certainly have quoted President Reagan on health care.  Reagan also believed that no one should be denied health care because they cannot pay for it.  But invoking the Gipper might have been too much for the Democratic Party's little-red-book wing.) 

In criticizing President Bush, Mr. Obama made an ugly comparison between the projected cost of his health plan and the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.  It was tasteless and sends the worst possible message to our enemies - that some struggles are too expensive.  We don't put a dollar figure on keeping the nation safe, and the president may soon find that out, painfully, as he faces critical foreign-policy decisions in the months ahead.

September 10,  2009