By speaking from a podium, President Barack Obama may have made his last stand for the Oval Office speech on Sunday night.

It’s never been the president’s best stage as a communicator, White House aides acknowledge, which may be why it was only Obama’s third attempt in seven years to use his iconic office as a backdrop for a speech to the nation. But if ever Obama needed a bully pulpit, it was now, as his most intractable domestic and foreign policy problems collided after a mass-shooting by ISIS-inspired killers.

But the speech made little impact, and the odd posture of Obama standing in front of flags, a shelf of family pictures and what looked like cranberry-colored blackout curtains didn’t seem to make a difference. Bad lighting and a misplaced microphone that captured the sound of the president’s mouth even when not speaking didn’t help.

Read the article “Oval Office Address, RIP?” on politico.com.