Oh, he’s good, but he’s no Carter

Hendrik Hertzberg, who used to write for a president, is still unpersuaded by Obama’s inaugural. Hertzberg’s view is close to my own (I thought Obama’s speech was tremendously powerful in the moment but that it won’t wear well), but I don’t mean to start a fight over the quality or otherwise of Barack Obama’s prose. I’m just always struck by the attention the presidential speechwriting alumni pay to the details of public speech. As though words mattered, or could.