Berkley Center

While conservative Catholic pundits were wringing their hands over Notre Dame University's invitation to President Obama to speak at its commencement, their total irrelevance was apparent when the President popped over to Georgetown University to give a major speech on the economy. Protests were minimal and excitement was palpable.

So many students wanted to attend the speech that the university had to establish a lottery to determine who got tickets. And then the site crashed when too many students tried to register at the same time. When I gave an extra ticket to a student, she was so excited you would think I had offered her a trip to the moon.

The enthusiasm and hope of young people for Obama is like nothing we have seen since the days of John Kennedy. And the polls show that his support among the public at large has only increased since his election. This is driving conservative pundits crazy and making them even shriller.

Yet rather than holding a rally for his fans, President Obama gave a substantive talk on the economy. Step by step he took his audience through the causes of the current crisis, what his administration has done so far and what challenges have to be faced in the future. This was prose, not poetry, as he explained at the beginning of his talk. But it was clear and concise prose explaining the situation better than do the shouting heads who claim to present the news.

The students sat with rapt attention hoping for an applause line, but there were few. My guess is that most people at home changed the channel. Economics, even from Professor Obama, is still the dismal science. But it is a science we had all better learn. The great communicator Ronald Reagan told us stories that made us feel good about America, but Obama recognizes that America has serious economic problems that have to be understood and addressed. He has become the Economics Professor in Chief.

He avoided the cheap shot of blaming the previous administration for the crisis. He was not afraid to explain why we cannot let banks fail and credit dry up. He took on his critics from the right and the left, not with sarcasm but with intelligence and honesty. He responded to critics who think he is doing too much and those who think he is doing to little.

Honest and intelligent people can still disagree with him and on some issues they may be right, but Obama has set a standard for serious political discourse that is not simply ideological appeals to the base. He is demanding that his audience stretch their minds and concentrate. It is nice to have a president who is more interested in educating the public than simply pleasing them. Whether we will rise to the challenge remains to be seen.