They released the full text of the speech (I wonder how much they edited it after word got out he was doing it?) and, as usual, it’s about him. Everything is about him:

When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, “This is no picnic for me either, buster.”

(snip)

I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

He left out the part where her dad was a cog in the Chicago political machine. I think that had more to do with what kind of schools she went to, don’t you?

Besides the references to the typical lefty agenda (talk about new energy technologies and “protecting our environment”, and fighting “poverty and homelessness…and discrimination”), it was a basic, boilerplate speech that one would expect a normal politician to give to students. But B. Hussein Obama isn’t a normal politician, is he? He’s the most liberal president we’ve had since FDR, and he’s got an ideological axe to grind. The fact that he was able to restrain himself and keep this on the level is remarkable.

And, just so we’re all clear on this, it wasn’t the speech that was ever the problem…it was the companion lesson plan they were going to hand out to the kids. You know, the “how you can help Obama” stuff.

Update: Well, harumph-harumph!!!, that was then, this is now!

For the record, I agree with GayPatriot. If it hadn’t been for the ruckus the right kicked up over this, you can bet Obama would have made a super-partisan speech. As it was, he was “caught” in a bind, so he scrapped what he more than likely intended to say and instead delivered a rather benign “stay in school” and “It’s all about me” speech.

And, again, it wasn’t the speech that conservatives had the problem with, it was the “educational” materials the administration was planning on sending along with it.