Richard Cohen's comments in the WaPo confirm something I should have mentioned in previous Obama/FDR comparison. Whereas FDR had a remarkable gravitas and capacity for consolation in his Fireside Chats, Obama seems to have lost his fire. The speech lacked rhetorical power and seemed sort of stillborn. The constant reference back to the troops was ok, I suppose, for a nation that has grown weary of sending those dust-booted young people to foreign lands for dubious purposes. And, sadly, this speech probably did nothing to stop the dumbed-down partisanship from getting even worse. One hopes Obama will get a second wind before long and go for the kind of language art that got him to that oval office in the first place.

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An Oval Office speech is supposed to be an important event. This was only Obama’s second, after all, and if he asks us all to interrupt our schedules and listen to what he has to say, then he at least ought to say something. In this, he dismally failed. We knew that American has ended its combat role in Iraq. We knew that Iraq had been turned over to the Iraqis. We knew our troops are brave, that they have sacrificed much and that over 4,000 of them had died. This is all worth saying -- but not saying and saying and saying.

Obama did have his moment. He extended a hand to his predecessor, George W. Bush, and he said it was “time to turn the page.” This was Obama at his most generous, and it was a theme of his that deserves praise. As a nation, we suffer a kind of slow arsenic poisoning from toxic partisanship. But the best he could say about Bush is that he, too, loved the troops and his country. This I, for one, never doubted. But these are also the qualities of a Boy Scout -- nice, but not quite presidential. Bush was a dismal president.

The love of troops has become the mindless trope of our times. It squelches both thought and criticism. And while the troops do deserve support, surely the best way to support them is to make sure that they are used wisely. This was not the case in Iraq, and Tuesday the president did not convince that it is in the case in Afghanistan. This was a bad speech, lacking both content and emotional wallop. The best that can be said for it is that it suited the Iraq war itself. Like the war, it should not have been undertaken.

By Richard Cohen ?|? August 31, 2010; 9:18 PM ET