Here are some quotes from conservatives reviewing The Two Speeches.

On President Obama:

Sen. John McCain told a CBS Web cast: “The president gave a very effective speech. I think it was a balance between the size and enormity of the challenges we face, but also an expression of hope and confidence that America will get through this. And I think his delivery and the theme of his speech was excellent.”

Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer sounded admiring even as he was critical. “He sure did a lot of sleight of hand tonight,” Krauthammer said on Fox News Channel. “He said, I just passed a stimulus with no earmarks and then he skips and says — and next year there will be no earmarks, in the budget — and leaving out the fact that the budget he’ll present in two days … has 8,000 in them. Now that’s chutzpah.”

No conservative politician is going to criticize Governor Bobby Jindal at this point, but the pundits aren’t so constrained:

Krauthammer: ”Jindal didn’t have a chance.“

Juan Williams: ”It just came off as amateurish. Even the tempo in which he spoke seemed like sing-song, and he was telling stories that seemed very simplistic and almost childish.“

Brit Hume: ”This was not Bobby Jindal’s greatest oratorical moment.”

(I know Juan Williams isn’t exactly a conservative, but compared to some of the left he’s relatively level-headed. And Krauthammer and Hume are two of the best rational conservatives.)

My take: I’m not a huge fan of President Obama, but he is a very effective speaker when he’s on his game, as he mostly was last night.

Bobby Jindal, however, seemed to be trying for the same “inspirey hopey changey” theme as the Big O, but came up with almost no specifics about anything at all.

As I wrote last night, the most specific point in his speech was the slam against volcano monitoring. And that came across as ignorant to me, and pandering to the anti-science far righties.

Evidence for this opinion: signing that Discovery Institute-inspired atrocity into law, which led to the canceling of a major scientific convention in New Orleans (with possibly more boycotts to come). It’s very telling that in the whole speech he couldn’t come up with anything more specific than a slam at a scientific program. There are much more worthy targets in the stimulus package than a relatively low cost science program with the potential to save a lot of human lives in a major volcanic event.