Barack Obama can deliver powerful and inspiring oratory.  He is also generally a very cool and detached personality.  Last night was different, and I really enjoyed it.

The President appeared as a man who has been through defeats -- more modest, more realistic, and, as a result, more relaxed.  I enjoyed his humour.  He seemed at ease in his own skin, non-anxious.  I felt personally drawn to him in a way I have never before.  Throughout the speech I smiled and felt warmth and regard toward him.

I was glad that this speech was not the long litany of policy proposals that States of the Union can be and last year's was.  I was glad we heard more about the duties of citizenship and creating opportunities.  I liked the focus on average Americans and the private sector.  Calling on private businesses to give Americans a raise was a good, conservative approach.  That is not traditional liberalism and admits that American society and citizenship is to something larger than the federal government.

I spent most of yesterday listening to Pete Seeger songs, reading about him, and listening to television and radio reports about him and his influence on American music and our larger society.  It made me wistful of a better America, the kind represented in his songs.  

Watching the news coverage of the speech last night and this morning, I was sad that the country isn't better than it is.  And disappointed in the state of news coverage.  The truth is, I don't want to hear partisan political analysis of the State of the Union address.  Even the responses of some of my favourite commentators, like PBS' David Brooks and Mark Shields, fell flat.

How much better if journalism presented us a panel of the leading lights responding by giving their appraisals of the actual state of the Union rather than political analysis of a speech?  Imagine hearing from business leaders like Jeff Bezos, Marissa Mayer, and Warren Buffett, philanthropists like Bill & Melinda Gates, poets like Wendell Berry and Ted Kooser, novelists like Cormac McCarthy and Toni Morrison, intellectuals like Martha Nussbaum and Steven Pinker, artists, songwriters, theologians, farmers, scientists, doctors, nuns, labor organizers, etc.  

I'd much rather hear those sorts of discussions about the actual state of our Union than more vapid political analysis of a speech.  Why aren't we drawing on our best and brightest in all fields to contribute more visibly and audibly to the discussion of who we are and where were are going and should go?