What is the point of Obama's orations?

Here's the problem: Mr. Obama is not the nation's Speaker in Chief. He's not a senator, and he's no longer a candidate. He's the president. A president's major speeches are different than those of anyone else. That high office imposes demands beyond the power of a podium. Inspiration matters, but the office also requires acts of leadership. A U.S. president's words must be connected to something beyond sentiment and eloquence. Too much of the time, Barack Obama's big speeches don't seem to be connected to anything other than his own interesting thoughts on some subject.

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With one notable exception -- health care -- there is a disconnect between the scale of Mr. Obama's ideas and his actions, and sometimes even reality, as when he says a U.S-Russian commitment to a world without nuclear weapons would be the "legal and moral foundation" for persuading the world's rogues to do the same. What, exactly, comes after the moral foundation?

The Russian "reset" isn't a foreign-policy statement; it's a sentiment. If you were the head of an Islamic nation, what policy conclusion were you supposed to take from that Cairo speech? All past administrations have been willing to talk to adversaries. When he speaks as president, Mr. Obama's audiences have reason to expect that some concrete actions or policies will flow from seemingly major statements. Other than more diplomats talking, I don't think much of anything is going to follow these. The Speech was pretty much it.