Okay, let me take another stab at what I was saying in this post: President Obama, like nearly every pundit in Washington, believes in the “Left-Center-Right” model of politics. Also like most pundits, he believes the Center is the best of these.

Because of this, he feels a need to explicitly talk about the good points and bad points of each side in his speeches. This isn’t wrong, unless you’re willing to argue that one side is perfect.

The problem is–apart from my quarrels with this model in general–that Obama does this so often it’s become boring and predictable. Now; because it’s a budget speech, you can’t expect it to be exciting, or even intelligible, to people who aren’t experts in this area.

Still, it just seems to me that Obama is forcing it when he really doesn’t need to.