In the spirit of American meritocracy, even those of us who usually line up in opposition to President Obama owe it to the man to point out when he’s done something right. The President’s speech in Accra, Ghana, last week was just such a success.

What’s most notable about Obama’s July 11 remarks before the Ghanaian Parliament is how sharply they diverged from the usual products of the paint-by-numbers Obama speechwriting kit. That formula is usually as follows:

• Lament the last eight years for exiling America from the Garden of Eden;
• Remind the audience that this is a time for tough choices and responsibility;
• Articulate a Deepak Chopraesque course of self-affirmation rather than any tangible solutions to the problem at hand;
• Make exaggerated claims wholly lacking in empirical justification about your critics (“Some have said that we should let the poor die in the streets and then harvest their organs as a source of alternative energy”);
• Close by recycling campaign slogans and using yourself as a metaphor for whatever issue is at hand.

But with his speech in Ghana, Obama managed something that eluded his muddled campaign speech on race, his hollow inaugural address and his sophistic remarks to the Islamic world in Cairo. He managed to speak hard truths softly.

After cursory references to the negative legacies of western imperialism and resource exploitation, Obama reminded his audience, “But the West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade, or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants.” In pointing to the continent’s future, the president reminded the legislators, “we must first recognize the fundamental truth that … development depends on good governance.” A bravura point. And one with a special resonance when delivered by an American president sired by a Kenyan national (and one who came to the United States to be educated, no less).

Despite Obama’s rhetorical prowess, his speeches are curious for their lack of quotability – an inevitable byproduct of the marriage of Technicolor style with cotton-candy substance. But here again, the President’s Ghana speech transcended this frequent shortcoming. Among the best lines:

• “… The true sign of success is not whether we are a source of perpetual aid that helps people scrape by – it's whether we are partners in building the capacity for transformational change.”
• “No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny, even if occasionally you sprinkle an election in there.”

These are not the glib and uninformed assertions of the man who said the Cold War ended because the world came together as one or who compared the plight of women in the Middle East to the relative inconveniences of their American counterparts. Rather, these are the words of a serious statesman who has given considerable thought to the shortcomings of foreign aid as a model for long-term economic growth or democracy alone as a global panacea. Who is this man and what has he done with Barack Obama?

Obama’s clear-eyed analysis of Africa is laudable, if curious. Anyone who has read either of the Commander-in-Chief’s pre-presidential books knows that he is trapped in a perpetual identity crisis the likes of which most people haven’t experienced since they were 16. It only adds to the enigma of Obama that this leads to brutal honesty with his father’s home continent while the country that produced his mother (and elevated him to its highest office) gets empty-calorie banalities. But it also begs the question of whether Obama comprehends that Africa’s problems are not episodic but rooted in principles that are true regardless of hemisphere.

Obama rightfully tells Ghana “No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top.” Does he think those companies are any more enthusiastic about a country where that same process is given the sanction of law through confiscatory tax rates of the type America is moving toward?

Obama powerfully notes that history is not on the side of “those who use coups or change constitutions to stay in power.” No, but the Obama Administration is – at least when it’s President Zelaya attempting to obliterate the Honduran constitution and install himself as dictator for life.

President Obama says that “People everywhere should have the right to start a business … without paying a bribe.” How does that principle square with labor unions to which the U.S. government gives majority ownership in their employer’s company after a year of heavy campaign donations?

The next generation of African statesmen could learn much from reading Obama’s Accra speech. So could Obama.