Obama's Becoming a Windbag

President Obama's European speeches are starting to sound repetitious and long-winded to Iain Martin of the Daily Telegraph. His London speech had flashes of brilliance but was too often "interminable, windy and not very impressive," Martin grumbles, and the president hammed it up in Prague yesterday with oh-puhlease lines like: "This Golden City, which is both ancient and youthful, stands as a living monument to your unconquerable spirit."

Obama not only goes on for too long, Martin complains, his rhetoric always seems to lead back to himself. "The Obamas have handled their trip well and in their public appearances have been a credit to their country," Martin writes. "But I'll wager that within a year or so he'll be marked down as a windbag." (More speech stories.)