Before you talk the talk, you gotta walk the walk?  Well, maybe not.  If you talk the talk better than anyone else, it appears, you may be excused from this requirement.  Ironic that AllTalk Barack faces (and will likely defeat) the one Republican who has surely walked the walk.  But then, history is full of just such ironies.  With his speeches Obama may very well fool a majority of Americans into voting for him this election.  They seemingly wish to be fooled.  The alternative, John McCain, is teleprompter challenged and telegenically deficient.  And while he's no fool, McCain is a known entity who fools no one.  Don't expect Obama to go one-on-one with him in those townhall debates where McCain has a chance to parlez some points.  Obama will stay scripted by his handlers, recycling and refining his speeches with ever more brazen comments designed to capture the political middle ground.   And his speaking style is pure political genius.  Where did it come from?

Like so much else about Obama, this is affectation. The African American religious cadence of Obama's speeches derives from black (and white) sermonizing tradition in the South, which was transplanted to Chicago where he learned it, no doubt, at TUCC.  It's like Soul Food Day at Occidental College.  You consume a bit of Southern culture thinking it is something else, like black solidarity or whatever.  Obama uses this manner of speaking to confirm his I-am-American bona fides.  LA to Southside via Columbia and Harvard.  He finally learned to speak American.  Sounds so down home, does our Chicago homey.  And check out Obama's hand movements during his speeches.  Fascinating.  He alternately gestures with both hands, the left and right sides of his body becoming mirror images in form and function.  I doubt this is accidental.  The choreographed message is loud and clear:  Biracial, metrosexual and politically ambidextrous.  All things to all people.

While the stylistics of his speeches are now perfected, the content continues to evolve.  For example, with both the Michigan speech and the one on Father's Day, Obama offered a prescription for correcting what ails America's youth.  I hope his young Energizer Bunny acolytes were listening.  He has plans for them, similar to those McCain once voiced:  you all need to give something back to your country.  Peace Corps, military service, community activism.  Forget about post-college employment where you can lounge around with a laptop writing worthless internet "content".  Think more like five years in Southside Chicago teaching disaffected inner city gangsta wannabes to read.  No slack for them either.  And together with his AIPAC speech, Obama has now shamelessly bolted to middle ground, while simultaneously offering a little something for everyone.  A chicken in every pot, a shotgun in every gun rack.  Jerusalem solely for the Jews.  It all rolls off the tongue so easily.  Bill Clinton should thank his lucky stars that Obama wasn't old enough to run against him in 1992.  Hillary gave him a fight, but Obama would've beaten Bill easily.  He's the new improved Panderer-in-Chief.  And he out-Reagans Reagan in the feel-good department to boot.  He's gonna walk the talk right up Pennsylvania Avenue.   And we're foolish enough to let him.  He once referred to himself as a blank slate on which voters write their own dreams.  That may be the truest thing he ever said.