That Gerson column on the pedestrian nature of Obama’s speeches end with this:

Obama’s model, instead, is the coolness of Coolidge. It is old-fashioned. It may even be admirable. It is hard to call it effective. With every speech, a realization grows: A president lacking in drama may also be lacking in inspiration.

If Obama’s model for governing were Coolidge, it wouldn’t matter much what his speeches were like. And I really don’t want inspiration from the chief magistrate of the executive branch of government in any case — that’s what church is for. When we are engaged in a great civil war, okay, but ordinary governing is not the moral equivalent of war, to coin a phrase, so it calls for boring — or at least non-inspirational — speeches. But when you start to see the president (of either party) as the pontifex maximus and Leader of the Free World, you expect august speeches. So the problem is not really with Obama’s speechwriters but with his (and our) expectations of the presidency.