Talking across the President.
From George Washington to Calvin Coolidge, presidents sought mostly to administer the laws that enabled citizens to live their own lives, ambitiously or not. It would have been thought impertinent for a president to tell a graduating class that what the country needs is the political will “to harness the ingenuity of your generation, and encourage and inspire the hard work of dedicated citizens . . . to repair the middle class; to give more families a fair shake; to reject a country in which only a lucky few prosper.” – Graduates, Your Ambition is the Problem – Roger Pilon in the WSJ Opinion pages
Reading that critique got me to read the whole speech. It’s available in many places, here from the WSJ.