2011 State of the Union: assessing the language

After President Obama’s 2009 State of the Union address author Stanley Fish responded this way to Barack Obama’s performance:

?It’s as if the speech, rather than being a sustained performance with a cumulative power, was a framework on which a succession of verbal ornaments was hung, and we were invited not to move forward but to stop and ponder the significances only hinted at.?

Fish is a professor of humanities and law at Florida International University in Miami and author of the book, ?How to Write a Sentence.? He gives us a reaction to the language used in President Obama’s second State of the Union address. Todd Zwillich, the Takeaway’s Washington correspondent, also weighs in on what was missing from the address.