There's a current diary near the top of the rec list that unabashedly pumps Obama's credentials as Multidimensional Chess Champion of the Universe. It's of the same diary-ilk as the daily photo diaries of our very photogenic President doing very photogenic things, although the emphasis in the diary in question is on his formidable oratorical skills.
And they are formidable. He is intellegent and well spoken, to the point that anyone would be foolish to argue that he isn't the best orator in that august position since Kennedy (Reagan looks like the B-actor he was, in comparison). Yessirree, this guy both looks and sounds good, and he can deliver a hell of a rousing, inspiring, and hard-hitting speech, when the stakes are high and the troops are feeling down.
But here's the rub (or rubs, I guess):
Speeches don't restore economic fairness to our citizens;
Speeches don't extract us from costly and disastrous long-term foreign entanglements;
Speeches don't repair 30 years of GOP and Neoliberal (read: New Democratic) demolition of the New Deal safeguards that would have prevented the '08 meltdown;
Speeches don't mask the fact that the biggest beneficiaries of HCR are the Insurance Industry and Big Pharma;
Speeches don't negate the bad advice, performance failure, and collusion with corporate will that his appointees exhibit on a regular basis;
Speeches don't alter the course of the Climate Change Freight Train, whose glowing, onrushing headlamp we all seem to be hypnotized by;
Speeches don't mask the fact that we are seriously fucked, not just by the GOP wrecking crew that he supplanted, who wants (and may indeed get) back into the driver's seat of our floundering government, but also by the very people he's surrounded himself with: the DLC elite who have done their best to give us not the Next New Deal we needed, but something Ronnie himself would have been very comfortable with.
But he takes a nice picture, can hit a jump shot from 30 feet, and knows how to elocute like no one else, I can't argue with that.
Yes, speeches are important, even vital, but execution is the job of the Executive.