In a much-hyped speech, President Obama said the U.S. would help Tunisia and Egypt enact democratic reforms by offering both countries new aid and investment. He also endorsed, more clearly than ever, the idea of establishing a Palestinian state along pre-1967 borders as a way to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As well, Obama denounced regimes in Libya, Syria, and Iran for using violence to silence demonstrators demanding greater freedom. Did the president spell out a brave new vision for U.S. policy in the Middle East, or merely make a lot of empty promises?

Here’s what the political responders are saying

On Monday evening, President Obama took to the stage at National Defense University to lay out his case for America’s bombing of Libya. In his half-hour, nationally televised speech, Obama said he felt compelled to attack because Moammar Gadhafi was on the verge of massacring his own people, because Libyan rebels were asking for support, and because there was an international consensus to do so. Here, some key takeaways:

• Obama offered a rationale: A “moral imperative”
  President Obama’s “workmanlike effort” to explain the why and how of his decision to bomb Libya boils down to this: “Because we could and our interests and values demanded it,” says Marc Ambinder in National Journal. The president offered a “moral imperative” for U.S. action, placing America on the “right side of history” and Gadhafi on the wrong side, says Susan Brooks Thislethwaite in The Washington Post. The U.S. acted, he said, before the “mass graves” were dug. “I have heard far worse arguments for the use of force.”

• But he didn’t exactly clarify the “Obama Doctrine”
  Anyone expecting the president to articulate an “Obama Doctrine” was disappointed, says Ben Smith at Politico. “The doctrine is there is no doctrine,” or maybe even an anti-doctrine that “makes sure above all that one size never fits all.” Nevertheless, Obama still laid out clear outlines for a “muscular and unapologetic” foreign policy, says Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. Broadly, his version of a doctrine “calls for humanitarian military intervention when it is both necessary and feasible.” In other words, says Jim Geraghty in National Review, it’s “look, just trust me on this.”

• We’re handing over control to NATO… sort of
  Obama said the U.S. is handing all control of the mission over to NATO on Wednesday, says The Associated Press, but that just means “turning the reins over to an organization dominated by the U.S., both militarily and politically.” The commander of the operation will be a Canadian general, but his boss, and his boss’s boss will both be Americans. And the attack aircraft, refueling tankers and advanced military technology that “made the U.S. the inevitable leader out of the gate will continue to be in demand.”

More key points here.

In last night’s State of the Union address, the president spent more than an hour addressing hefty issues, from America’s failing education system to the deficit, and critics have zealously dissected his every syllable. But a number of less weighty issues received critical scrutiny, too — from Rep. Paul Ryan’s aggressively gleaming hair to Michelle Obama’s dress. Here are some non-policy points of discussion:

Michele Bachmann’s “crazy eyes”
Bachmann’s Tea Party rebuttal is being noted as much for her sideways stare as for its content. Not only was her rebuttal laced “with all sorts of nonsense about rising debt and Iwo Jima,” says Jeff Neumann at Gawker, the “Tea Party zombie” consistently stared off-camera with “crazy eyes.” Was she looking at a “tall statue of George Washington, or maybe of Darth Vader?” mused Ken Tucker in Entertainment Weekly. Keith Olbermann wondered if the issues were technical. “Did the Tea Party not spring either for a Camera Red Light or a combined camera-teleprompter?” he asks via Twitter. “It costs $3.”

Salmon
The president may have talked jobs and health care, but one thing really stuck with Americans: Salmon. According to an NPR survey, “salmon” — the government regulation of which was the subject of an Obama joke — was the most memorable word of a night the Reuters blog has called “salmon ‘chanted evening.”

Paul Ryan’s “Eddie Munster hair”
Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) response to Obama’s speech was “pretty good,” says Chris Rovzar in New York, despite his “uncanny Eddie Munster hair,” complete with widow’s peak, and “weirdly bloodshot eyes.” Yeah, it looked as though “we [had] just caught him smoking up in what he thought was an empty classroom,” jokes Alex Pareene at Salon.

Here’s the full list

If you’re like some of us and don’t have access to cable from your apartment, you can watch the State of the Union live here. Also, The Week will be live-blogging the address with updates from the best opinion makers out there. And if you’re on Twitter, you can follow the list we’ve created of reliable sources that we will likely be using to monitor reactions to the speech. Enjoy!

• What to expect from the speech (straight talk on govt. spending, vague discussion of tax reform, cheerleading)

• What probably won’t be in the speech (support for climate change science, acknowledgment of the recession’s impact on minorities)

• What will happen after the speech (Rebuttals!)

Here’s a guide to help you get ready

Opinion from The New York Times, Washington Post, The New Republic, Power Line, and the New York Post.

The words “were beautiful and moving and powerful,” says John Podhoretz in the New York Post. But Obama couldn’t transcend the “wildly inappropriate” cheers from the crowd. “Even Obama’s lovely peroration about little Christina Green — ‘I want us to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it’ — was greeted by the listeners as though they were delegates at a political convention, rather than attendees at a memorial service.”