Dennis Roddy reads the president's speech and finds it "calorie free."

Here's the top of Dennis' essay -- with the full version over here at PG+:

WITH EVERY PASSING DAY, every faux scandal complicated by reticence, every gallon of crude disgorging into the Gulf, every desperate speech before a hand-crafted audience, Barack Obama harkens back to 1978 and an era redolent of hope lost, dreams squandered, ideals cheapened.

Things could yet be different. Obama is not Jimmy Carter, which is to say he does not exude the self-doubt and fixation for detail that so characterized the seriocomic presidency of the peanut farmer. Carter was and is a good man. He is, without a doubt our greatest ex-president and I am proud to say I voted for him for ex-president. Obama aspires to Kennedy glamour. He is athletic.  His wife is a stunner. His children go nicely with the rest of the ensemble. Problem is that he rises so far above the fray that he seems not to notice it and, on the occasions he descends, it is at the wrong time.