Politico's John Harris mocks President Obama's State of the Union health care comments:

His tepid rallying cry: “As temperatures cool, I want everyone to take another look at the plan we've proposed.”

That just isn't honest. That line -- quite obviously -- was not intended to be a “rallying cry.” This is a “rallying cry”:

I will not walk away from these Americans, and neither should the people in this chamber. (Applause.)

And this is a “rallying cry”:

Here's what I ask Congress, though: Don't walk away from reform. Not now. Not when we are so close. Let us find a way to come together and finish the job for the American people. (Applause.) Let's get it done. Let's get it done. (Applause.)

You can tell those lines are the rallying cries from the words, but you can also tell from the fact that the rallying cries were met with applause.

But Harris wanted to call Obama's comments “tepid,” so he picked a relatively mundane line and falsely claimed it was intended to be the speech's “rallying cry.”

That's obviously inane; you can make any speech look tepid if you select its most mundane line and pretend it was mean to be a soaring call to action. Here, let's apply the John Harris technique to another famous speech: Martin Luther King's “I Have A Dream” speech was tepid -- just look at its rallying cry: “In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check.” Wow, that's a bland rallying cry!

You can use such tactics to belittle a speech, but you shouldn't -- because it's completely dishonest.