Vital Signs - I'm a

Vital Signs - I'm a serious student of political oratory. My father was a high school speech teacher, and I grew up with a deep appreciation of the art of moving people and nations with a well-crafted and perfectly-timed speech.

And in this regard the President has surprised pleasantly, even stirringly. He will never be mistaken for Winston Churchill - but then, we are not Britain in 1940, and the situation doesn't call for one.

In an earlier post, I expressed some trepidation about what seemed like a retrenchment on engaging Iraq. After reading Andrew Sullivan's piece today, I wondered: is Bush abandoning the notion of attacking Iraq, or was he downplaying the hawkishness and concentrating on building up the European consensus and realization of the danger terrorism presents them?

Peggy Noonan's article today makes me think - maybe, just maybe, the latter.

And I'll be watching his upcoming speech in Normandy very closely. This, the scene of what may have been our nation's greatest undertaking, has been where previous American presidents set the stage for other great undertakings; Eisenhower on the changes since he first crossed those beaches twenty years earlier, Reagan making the case to Europe to resist Soviet tyranny...

...and, this week, Bush. Stay tuned.