THE SPEECH - AT 8:28 A.M. ET:  There is still plenty of buzz about Obama's Nobel Prize speech, and plenty of praise, sometimes qualified, from conservatives.  That's the way it should be.  If the man says or does something right, we note it.  Karl Rove has commented that if you keep demonizing an opponent, no matter what he does, pretty soon people stop listening, and he's right.

Here, Abe Greenwald, at NRO, wonders whether the president has gone neocon:

During his Nobel Peace Prize–acceptance speech today, Barack Obama said, “For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world.” He cited the historical example of Adolf Hitler and the present-day example of al-Qaeda. This rounds out a year that has seen a succession of real-world object lessons that bear out the claims of the intellectual tendency known as neoconservatism: Iran has rejected a torrent of American obsequiousness and will not be charmed out of pursuing nuclear weapons; its population, meanwhile, is clamoring for a robust American defense of democracy; a far-left American president has determined that a significant surge of American troops is the only way to win a faltering war effort in a far-off Muslim land; that same president has acknowledged that “we’ve achieved hard-earned milestones in Iraq” and is using the basis of those achievements as the model for his new ramp-up strategy.

Ah yes, we remember it well.

In these, three convictions often linked with neoconservative thought have been affirmed:

1. No matter how technologically advanced and interconnected the world becomes, there will be bad actors, and their obstinacy will remain intact...

2. Populations living under despotic leadership are at all times engaged in a desperate struggle for liberty. Moreover, these populations look to America, the world’s longest-running constitutional democracy, for moral and material support...

3. A willingness to apply overwhelming and innovative military force remains critical to America’s wars — regardless of their asymmetric natures...

The president's speech wasn't perfect, far from it.  But it was an important move in the right direction...if those words are translated into sustained action.

The key question is this:  Was Obama's Nobel Prize speech his own declaration of independence?  Was it his way of signaling to us that he is moving away from the claustrophobic confines of his party's rigid left wing?  Well, we hope so, but we'll require plenty of proof, week by week, to be convinced.  After all, in his first ten months in office, this president has often seemed to follow the Leninist principle - two steps forward, one step back.  We hope the speech wasn't just the step back, but a step forward.

December 11, 2009