There was a time when a presidential speech to the nation was a moment of high drama — when most Americans gathered around their radios or televisions to hear words of great consequence.

When President Franklin Roosevelt spoke, Doris Kearns Goodwin noted in her book “No Ordinary Time,” you could walk through a neighborhood and hear every word of his talk through the windows of every home. When President John F. Kennedy announced a U.S. embargo on Soviet ships during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, and when President Richard Nixon appealed to “the great silent majority” to support his Vietnam policy in the fall of 1969, there was a sense that big matters were at stake.

President Barack Obama’s speech to the nation Tuesday night is not one of those times.

Indeed, if the subject at hand were not the murderous use of chemical weapons against civilians in Syria, there would be something comic about the setting for the speech.

For openers, the premise of the speech has been upended in the last 24 hours, in large measure by an off-hand comment by Secretary of State John Kerry about a possible resolution — international control of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile — that, in Kerry’s own words, “can’t be done.”

But the Russian government seized on Kerry's words, proposing a plan to avert U.S. military action in Syria by placing its chemical arsenal under U.N control. Obama and some members of Congress seem open to the idea.

So the core message that Obama was going to deliver — that we must hold Syria accountable for an atrocity that even Hitler and Stalin did not commit — will now be forced to reflect the fact that there may be a diplomatic solution to the crisis, even as Obama will insist his threat of military force is what brought it about.

What makes Obama’s speech far less portentous than those of other presidents, however, is not just the specifics of the Syrian dilemma. It goes to the heart of the power of a president to persuade.

Put a president in front of the cameras and behind the desk in the Oval Office, and almost instantly talk begins about “the bully pulpit” — Theodore Roosevelt’s phrase for the power of the chief executive to summon support from the citizenry. It’s a power that has always been exaggerated, as historian George Edwards III convincingly demonstrates in his book "On Deaf Ears." And at a time when the prospective television audience has been fragmented by so many alternatives, the president’s power has been structurally diminished as well.

Similarly, the idea that political leaders and citizens rally behind a president on international matters has always been overstated. Politics has often not “stopped at the water’s edge.”

Republicans sharply attacked FDR’s conduct of World War II in 1942 and 1944 and President Harry Truman’s conduct of the Korean conflict in 1952. Nixon’s Democratic challenger in 1972, South Dakota Sen. George McGovern, sharply criticized Nixon’s Vietnam policies, and both Kerry and Obama made the Iraq War a central issue in the 2004 and 2008 presidential campaigns against President George W. Bush.

Then there's the fact that two generations in Congress have found themselves misled by White Houses during the Vietnam escalation and then the run-up to the Iraq War, and are simply unwilling to give this White House the benefit of the doubt. That skepticism is compounded by the refusal of many, if not most, House Republicans to support anything Obama advocates, and the strong anti-war disposition of most congressional Democrats.

Barack Obama came to national prominence on the power of his rhetoric. That power has never faced a test as daunting as it confronts tonight.

Nation awaits Obama speech ... or does it?

Obama: U.S. military ready if Russia’s Syria plan fails

President Barack Obama warned late Tuesday that America’s military will be ready to strike Syria if a Russian-backed diplomatic plan to secure and destroy Bashar Assad’s stockpiles of chemical weapons fails.

“I’ve ordered our military to maintain their current posture to keep the pressure on Assad and to be in a position to respond if diplomacy fails,” Obama said in a formal address to the nation from the White House.

But Obama, making the case for the latest dizzying spin of his muddled and unpopular Syria policy, did not set a time frame for Moscow’s approach to succeed.

“The Russian government has indicated a willingness to join with the international community in pushing Assad to give up his chemical weapons,” he said. “It’s too early to tell whether this offer will succeed, and any agreement must verify that Assad keeps its commitments.”

“But this initiative has the potential to remove the threat of chemical weapons without the use of force,” he said.

“I have therefore asked the leaders of Congress to postpone a vote to authorize the use of force while we pursue this diplomatic path,” he said.

The president said he had spoken to French President François Hollande and British Prime Minister David Cameron, and that Secretary of State John Kerry will meet Thursday with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov.

The United States, Britain and France will work with Russia and China — which have vetoed U.N. Security Council action on Syria — to craft a resolution “requiring Assad to give up his chemical weapons and to ultimately destroy them under international control.”

Amid concerns that Assad could emerge strengthened from the standoff with the United States, Obama did not restate his longstanding policy that the Syrian leader cannot stay in power. Instead, he repeated his observation that “the United States military doesn’t do pinpricks.”

“I don’t think we should remove another dictator with force. We learned from Iraq that doing so makes us responsible for all that comes next,” he said."We cannot resolve someone else's civil war through force."

But he signaled for the first time that any Syrian counter-punch after American strikes could cost Assad his life.

“Neither Assad nor his allies have any interest in escalation that would lead to his demise,” Obama warned.

The president’s speech amounted to his second dramatic about-face on the international stage with regard to Syria. Only 10 days ago, in the Rose Garden, he shocked the world by impatiently challenging Congress to back him up on his decision to go to war with Syria.

On Tuesday, Obama earnestly announced that he was pursuing a diplomatic option and pleaded with Congress not to screw it up by voting on (and defeating) his request to use military force.

View gallery."

U.S. President Barack Obama arrives to address the nation about the situation in Syria from the East …

In both cases, Obama disguised the fact that he was boxed in by circumstances, many of his own making.

The decision to go to Congress came after it became clear that the U.N. Security Council would not give him the international legal legitimacy for a strike, key allies such as Britain would not unite in a kind of coalition of the willing that would let him claim legitimacy, and the American people signaled in poll after poll that they would not lend their support. The resulting crisis in credibility — Obama had declared in August 2012 that the use of chemical weapons crossed a “red line” — led the president to try to enlist Congress.

The decision to give the Russian proposal a whirl came after it became clear that Congress would reject his request for authorization to use military force, leaving him to shoulder the full burden — and consequences — for action alone.

Washington, which accuses Assad's forces of slaughtering more than 1,000 people, including hundreds of children, in a chemical weapons attack on Aug. 21, has been keen to highlight slow but undeniably steady support from the international community for a strong response.

Obama spent much of his speech trying to answer the chief criticisms of Americans opposed to military strikes — a number that has grown, even after witnessing the horrors of the apparent nerve gas attack in social media videos and photographs. The president directed wavering Americans to view that footage, including “a father clutching his dead children, imploring them to get up and walk.”

He promised again not to put "boots on the ground" in Syria (a prospect that Kerry envisioned if Assad's chemical weapons risk falling into the hands of extremists), "pursue an open-ended action like Iraq or Afghanistan" or "pursue a prolonged air campaign like Libya or Kosovo." He insisted that any actions would require "modest effort and risk."

He allowed that some elements of the rebels fighting to topple Assad were extremists but warned "al Qaida will only draw strength in a more chaotic Syria."

And he challenged Congress to rise — when called — to the burden of approving military force.

"To my friends on the right, I ask you to reconcile your commitment to America's military might with a failure to act when a cause is so plainly just," he said. "To my friends on the left, I ask you to reconcile your belief in freedom and dignity for all people with those images of children writhing in pain and going still on a cold hospital floor, for sometimes resolutions and statements of condemnation are simply not enough."

- France was drafting a strongly worded U.N. Security Council resolution warning Syria to place its chemical weapons arsenal under international control or face “extremely serious consequences.”

- The United Nations Security Council envisioned, then postponed, a meeting.

- Russia planned to send the United States proposals for U.N. action, apparently eager to avoid a binding resolution implicitly carrying the threat of force.

- Secretary of State John Kerry said Washington needs “a full resolution from the Security Council in order to have confidence that this has the force that it has to have.”

- Syria said it would declare its chemical weapons arsenal and hoped to join the Chemical Weapons Convention, the international treaty forbidding countries from stockpiling those weapons of mass destruction.

View Gallery


Obama on Syria: We'll be ready to respond

The president warns that America’s military will be ready to strike Syria if a Russia-backed diplomatic plan fails.
What he asks of Congress

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama voiced his conviction Tuesday night that Syrian President Bashar Assad was to blame for deadly chemical attacks against civilians, but again he offered no proof.

A look at his remarks to the nation, seeking support for a military strike against Syria, and how they compare with the facts as publicly known:

OBAMA: "We know the Assad regime was responsible. ... The facts cannot be denied."

THE FACTS: The Obama administration has not laid out proof Assad was behind the attack.

The administration has cited satellite imagery and communications intercepts, backed by social media and intelligence reports from sources in Syria, as the basis for blaming the Assad government. But the only evidence the administration has made public is a collection of videos it has verified of the victims. The videos do not demonstrate who launched the attacks.

Administration officials have not shared the satellite imagery they say shows rockets and artillery fire leaving government-held areas and landing in 12 rebel-held neighborhoods outside Damascus where chemical attacks were reported. Nor have they shared transcripts of the Syrian officials allegedly warning units to ready gas masks or discussing how to handle U.N. investigators after it happened.

The White House has declined to explain where it came up with the figure of at least 1,429 dead, including 400 children — a figure far higher than estimates by nongovernmental agencies such as the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has counted only victims identified by name, with a current total of 502. In his remarks, Obama more generally accused Assad's forces of gassing to death "over 1,000 people, including hundreds of children."

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OBAMA: "So even though I possess the authority to order military strikes, I believed it was right in the absence of a direct or imminent threat to our security to take this debate to Congress."

THE FACTS: Obama's statement that he has the authority to launch military action is par for the course for presidents, and historically disputed by Congress. The issue never gets settled.

The Constitution delineates power between the president, who serves as commander in chief of the armed forces, and Congress, which has the ability to declare war. Over time, however, questions arose over where the president's authority ends and where Congress' begins.

The 1973 War Powers Resolution sought to end the debate, but it has only fueled arguments between Republican and Democratic administrations alike and those who consider themselves constitutional purists.

The law gives the president the power to act without congressional approval in cases of national emergency for up to 60 days. In such a case, the president must consult with Congress. And if the deadline passes without congressional authorization, the president has 30 additional days to remove troops.

But what constitutes a national emergency and what consultation means remain subjects of continued disputes.

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AP writers Kimberly Dozier and Bradley Klapper contributed to this report.

EDITOR'S NOTE _ An occasional look at claims by public figures that take shortcuts with the facts or don't tell the full story

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