I lost the over/under on the length of tonight’s State of the Union speech. I had him under 40 minutes. Beyond that nothing about this speech was a surprise. I thought he was at his best talking about why we needed to stay in Iraq and it was by far the best speech I’ve seen him give on that topic. Overwhelmingly, though, it was typical Bush. All big ideas and lofty goals with no specifics. As we’ve learned in every area but most certainly in Iraq, this White House has a few issues with the details of their lofty goals.

By the way, did you notice that almost every domestic policy initiative was a Democratic platform issue from 2004? Original thinker, this President… Let’s see what the Democrats have to say next.

Update:: It’s about time someone said this about the President. I wasn’t a fan of the “can’t rebut this in a short time” opening, but the rest of the speech was strong.

I’m disappointed in Sen. Lindsey Graham and the Republican attempt to say that a vote on a non-binding resolution is somehow a commentary on General Petraeus. I wish Sen. Clinton would’ve just responded to that directly, saying that a resolution wouldn’t be a commentary of our armed forces or General Petraeus but a vote of no confidence in the civilian leadership of the military. In other words, it’s a vote of no confidence in our President. Why? Because he has played politics with this war from the beginning.

It’s that simple, and that’s why the American people are against this war.

That being said, I suspect that the President will enjoy a bounce in overnight polls. There was very little to turn off anyone in this speech. It was full of the happy, fuzzy, good things that all of us love. Avoiding the specifics makes that very easy.