David Brooks on Thirteen thought that it was just a conventional liberal speech (David is a republican-leaning syndicated columnist of NY Times). Mark Shields and the rest of the experts (mostly historians) thought it was not. David thought it lacked passion unlike O's other speeches, and blamed that on the "aloofness" of the podium (his insinuation was that O needs to be near to his audience physically to feed off of the passion of the listeners... well, may be he is right.)

And O was presidential, and did pay due homage to his former Democratic rivals in a fine way! He has the guts, grits, intelligence and wisdom to lead is what came off from his speech, I think. And he did provide the meat some Democracts and most Republicans were blaming him for not having.