President Obama’s speech to our nation’s school kids, which had the right wringing it’s hands for the better part of a week, has now come and gone.  Who could have known that Obama would end up giving a speech that Reagan would have been proud to present?

 How was it? In a word, excellent.

It was a speech focused on self reliance, bettering yourself, sticktuitiveness, and individualism.  Obama extolled the virtues of focusing on a goal, and never letting go of that dream.  Failure, he said, is just another way to learn.

While one might quibble about the ambiguity of the President’s notion that kids should work towards making America a more “fair” country, the rest of the speech was on the right track.  In fact, it would have been right at home in the back pocket of any conservative Presidential candidate.

So, if we ignore the fact that Obama’s team initially presented schools with a remarkably biased partisan lesson plan, we can be left with little but praise for the sentiments he conveyed.

“At the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents and the best schools in the world,” Obama said. “And none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities.”

If only more of his national policy followed that line of individualist thinking, rather than focusing on ways to circumvent it in favor of nanny state programs, we’d all be in much better shape.

…and so would the president’s numbers.

- Robert Laurie

For a full transcript of the speech, click here.