In fact, most such folks complain about others' overuse of commas!
I suspect Obama understands the commas in the speeches Axelrod writes for him. At the same time I'm pretty sure he has no idea where to put them.
I've developed a little litany of Obama-isms ~ "unh, mmmm, nghnm, nork, dork" ~ that he goes into when asked to say something for which he does not have an already prepared text ready to go. Add in elbows flopping up and down, tongue pushing lips in front of teeth ~ you've seen someone do this before.
Then there's the perfect diction that he draws from Axelrod's word processor.
What Obama and Axelrod forgot to do is work the "unh, mmm,...." stuff into his regular litany as delivered with the assistance of a teleprompter. That way something he says would appear natural.
Now, comment on the Democrats ~ they are too uneducated and erudite to even begin to comprehend how inartful Obama's speach appears to someone who can use commas.
I would wager there are no commas in the speeches that are written for Obama.
Instead, I bet they use ledes (...) to indicate a pause. And arbitrary line breaks (rather than paragraphs) to create the cadence.
It's a not uncommon way of writing speeches. And it is also exactly the way virtually all ad copy is written (voiceover or print ad copy). In other words, the material is written as the writer wants it delivered.
I've been puzzling about the best way to render his deeply nasal and truncated contraction of "you know".
"Yon", "yo'n", "yo'wn", yyo'wn", or maybe "eyo'wn" would work.
Obama has this need to be perfect, so he thinks out the implications and expected replies to his response, adjusts what he's going to say, rethinks that, too, and while he's doing all this in his mind, all that comes out of his mouth is "uhh... umm... urr..."
-PJ