What Obama really said in that inaugural speech (And what he left out)

[Geee]

Investors Business Daily:

Not many inaugural addresses go down in history books as memorable, especially second inaugural addresses. Lincoln aside.

With few exceptions, inaugurals are mere aspirational tone poems, providing a generally warm, good feeling about where the new or renewed leader wants to take the country although, truth be told, events usually begin reshaping those goals within days.

And coming very soon after Inauguration Day is the chief executive's annual State of the Union address when he details his laundry list of legislative goals to a joint session of Congress. For Obama, that comes on Feb. 12, three weeks from tonight.

Despite the incumbent Democrat's pride in his speech-making skills, Barack Hussein Obama's first inaugural speech was memorable in 2009 not for anything he said, but for the fact that an African American was saying it.

We published a complete C-SPAN video of those past remarks here. And this morning we have another C-SPAN video of Obama's 2013 remarks in full. Scroll down for that. And scroll down for his full 2013 speech transcript too.

Officials estimated Obama's inauguration crowd this time between 800,000 and a million, about half the 2009 gathering. Much of the initial media coverage of Monday's 2,100-word speech focused on the downright liberal nature of the agenda Obama outlined, although he did not say the words "liberal" or its preferred codeword "progressive."

It is the beguiling style of Obama's speechwriters to help their boss have it both ways in public communications, whether it's about reducing the deficit or drilling for oil. He's 100% serious about cutting our historic debts, now larger than the entire economy itself. But we must also "invest," meaning "spend," on immense new infrastructure projects.