As you all know, President Obama spoke today (Thursday, Feb. 3rd, 2011) at Recreation hall, minutes after visiting energy facilities that received a U.S. Dept. of Energy grant funding research on "green energy" (Note: Sec. of Energy Chu visited PSU's nuclear reactor in January.). Speech text: http://live.psu.edu/story/51187
I thought Obama spoke about innovation well, a theme he brought up in his State of the Union address a few weeks before. However, he missed a crucial component: weather. PSU's meteorology program has a very high reputation. Now, we all know that I'm partial to Meteorology being a student majoring in the subject, but here's the point: the weather (climate) has to be taken into account - solar and wind are dependent on certain weather conditions.
Also noteworthy, Obama's visit, like Eisenhower's (commencement speech), was affected by the weather. Of course, Ike had experience dealing with weather - the famous D-Day forecast and where to drop the 2nd bomb (Nagasaki was not the primary target).
His speechwriters in both the SotU and in this speech left key components out - SotU didn't cover many aspects of foreign and domestic policy, and this speech needed more of the wholistic approach. Also, PSU is a land grant university and was worth mentioning here (innovation was part of the mission statement of LGUs). I hope Obama can do better in the future. Missing ideas were the only problem with his speech.
