Before President Obama delivered his address tonight about the end of combat operations in Iraq, Charles Krauthammer said on Fox News that the speech would be “a mistake,” adding, “You don't declare an arbitrary milestone on a fixed timetable when you have no Iraqi government and Al Qaeda is resurgent”:

KRAUTHAMMER: He had one task. He has not succeeded. I'm with Michael O'Hanlon ... who says this is a mistake. You don't declare an arbitrary milestone on a fixed timetable when you have no Iraqi government and when Al Qaeda is resurgent. You do it when you have a stable government and then you have a ceremony in which the president and the new leader of Iraq have a ceremony in which the transition is declared mutually acknowledged. This is premature and political and it could be very costly.

But after the speech, Fox News' Sean Hannity complained that Obama didn't explicitly declare victory in Iraq:

HANNITY: If he had his way, we wouldn't have had this today. But he couldn't even utter the words, “we were victorious,” which, if I was one of the brave men and women that served there, I think I would be a little offended tonight.

Before the speech, Stephen Hayes said on Special Report that “the real question” is “whether the president treats this as sort of a campaign speech ... or whether he talks to the country as the president, as he should while speaking from the Oval Office”:

HAYES: The real question is going to be whether the president treats this as sort of a campaign speech as he did in his radio address this week or whether he talks to the country as the president, as he should when speaking from the Oval Office. From the excerpts and from everything we've been hearing from the White House today, it seems like they didn't make a decision. It sounds like he's going to do a little bit of both.

After the speech, Fox News' Bill O'Reilly said he wished the “boring” address had sounded more like Obama's campaign speeches:

O'REILLY: Why was he so boring? ... Here's my problem: I watched this guy on the campaign trail. He was Elvis. the guy was out -- he did this and hope and change and we're and that and the place was going wild, all right? And he was talking about serious things. ... What I'm telling you is that he has changed his demeanor -- still talking about serious things. Talking about serious things in the campaign, he's talking about serious things now. But now he's the boring professor -- not the nutty professor, the boring professor.

[...]

CROWLEY: During the campaign, he was campaigning, which is the only thing that this man knows how to do --

O'REILLY: Then why doesn't he keep doing it?

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