The best thing that can be said about last night’s second Oval Office performance is that it wasn’t as bad as Mr. Obama’s first Gulf Oil spill address. Still, it was pretty bad.

The president announced that combat operations are over — but 50,000 troops (all combat trained, commentators said) are remaining, including 5,000 special forces soldiers.

He implied that, in keeping a campaign promise, the withdrawal was a product of administration initiative — except that the schedule and other specifics of the withdrawal were negotiated by the Bush administration before it left office.

He said we were going to stay in Afghanistan and use the money we had been spending in Iraq to that struggle — although we would begin pulling out next year.

“Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” Emerson famously wrote. But how about foolish inconsistency? I am not a supporter of the president, but I like to see the game played well. Last night it was as if a rookie took the mound, and I’m not talking about Stephen Strasburg