Bill Kristol Liked It (How Can I?)

Among the conservative or neo-conservative reactions to Obama's Nobel speech are these (embolding is mine).

Michael Gerson, speechwriter for George W. Bush and conservative columnist for WaPo

After a series of disappointing appearances on the rhetorical stage, President Obama’s Nobel Prize Lecture was complex and impressive. It is the only Obama speech I can recall when expectations were low, and he exceeded them dramatically.

In this way, it was a very American speech. Obama did not present himself, as he has done before, as a “citizen of the world.” He spoke as an American president, with vast responsibilities, requiring difficult choices of war and peace.

In fact, Obama made a number of veiled jabs at American allies and partners who talk a good diplomatic game but do little to apply the pressure that makes diplomacy work.

But the intellectual approach of the speech was sophisticated, rich and memorable. Obama described a Niebuhrian tension between a fallen world that demands force to restrain evil and a realm of ideals that draws us beyond those compromises.

Richard Cohen, WaPo columnist and liberal hawk:

Obama’s Nobel prize acceptance speech had many good elements. He defended just wars, he acknowledged the presence of evil in the world, he defended humanitarian intervention, such as the one in the Balkans, and he rued the “disconnect between the efforts of those who serve and the ambivalence of the broader public.” This Obama defied the ridiculous caricature of his critics on the right: Here was no leftie peacenik.

Someday, Obama may grow into the speech he gave. It was a good speech -- but like a young wine, served before its time.

Jackson Diehl, hawkish columnist for the WaPo:

I agree with Ruth Marcus: President Obama’s Nobel speech was eloquent, stirring, high-minded. While accepting the peace prize, he offered one of the best defenses of war ever delivered by a modern political leader.

Finally, Bill Kristol, neo-con-in-chief, compared paragraphs of Obama's speech with Bush's 2002 State of the Union and liked the similarities, saying it was 'change I can believe in.' 

Need I say any more?