After President Obama’s May 19th address on his Middle East policy, I sat down with AI Editor Adam Garfinkle. In his previous life, Adam was speechwriter for both Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice when they served as Secretary of State under George W. Bush. He’s been writing a series of line-by-line analyses of President Obama’s speeches on our site. I wanted to get his overall impressions before he took this latest speech completely apart in his usual meticulous way.

From the perspective of pure craft, Adam gave the speech relatively low marks. He also struggled to come up with a reason for why this speech needed to be given in the first place. Even though he thought the Israel-Palestine remarks were the best-executed section, those could have waited for this weekend’s talk at AIPAC. Have a listen:

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