Let The Man Speak

Since the election of Barack Obama, we have been treated to the most televised President in history. And in case he hadn't shown us that beaming smile often enough, his failing health care plan was the cue for his latest tactic, which the press has described as "all Obama, all the time." Eleven straight days and counting. Obama has shown up every single day to tout one of his pet programs, usually health care with an occasional foray into race relations.

Even before the Henry Louis Gates Jr. dustup over racial relations interrupted the President's stream of consciousness there have been signs that this President isn't nearly as unflappable as he would have us believe. Full sentences are declining. Umms and uhhs are increasing. Disjointed responses to simple question seem to be the order of the day, often wandering off into territory unrelated to the actual questions. Even George Bush II's mangled English didn't wander this far off track.

Much has been made of Obama's use of teleprompters, and most of what has been said is accurate. But as the mystical Obama spell wears off, and the obviousness of planted questions sinks in on the American public, the press has begun to go off-script to ask questions which don't leave this smooth-talker with his trusty ready-made answers. With reporter Helen Thomas's one-rounder with Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, the manipulation of the press is becoming a bit more difficult. And with the Gates planted question, it is even becoming apparent that despite being prepared for the question, the President is fully capable of taking the wrong position and completely misunderstanding why his words would anger so many average Americans.

The constant appearances on TV are not having their desired effect. The more he babbles about health care, the more obvious it becomes that this is just an ego trip and that Obama simply doesn't have the least idea what the plan is other than it must be good--after all, he's proposing it. The average American wants to believe what a President is saying, but when that President can't even come close to explaining a plan that will intrude into nearly every area of American life and health, they begin to have serious doubts. "Hope" and "change" are no substitute for hard facts and coherent explanations, and Obama is flailing.

RINO writer Peggy Noonan, who was extremely kind to Obama both before and after the November election, has summed it up when she says: "The White House has misread the national mood. The problem isn't that they didn't 'bend the curve,' or didn't 'sell it right.' Back then the mood was 'change is for the good.' But that altered as the full implications of the financial crash seeped in. The crash gave everyone a diminished sense of their own margin for error. It gave them a diminished sense of their country's margin for error. Americans are not in a chance-taking mood. They're not in a spending mood, not after the unprecedented spending of the past year, from the end of the Bush era through the first six months of Obama. Here the Congressional Budget Office report that a health care bill would not save money but would instead cost more than a trillion dollars in the next decade was decisive. People say bureaucrats never do anything. The bureaucrats of CBO might have killed health care."

To which I would add, Obama's less-than-adequate efforts on TV to downplay the costs, or merely lie about them, have resulted in even more distrust rather than less. The American people are asking "Why should we support a plan that spends our grandchildren into poverty when you can't even explain the basics?" "We must have a health care bill before the August recess" just isn't cutting it anymore.

As Noonan put it: "His news conference the other night was bad. He was filibustery and spinny and gave long and largely unfollowable answers that seemed aimed at limiting the number of questions asked and running out the clock. You don't do that when you're fully confident. Far more seriously, he didn't seem to be telling the truth. We need to create a new national health care program in order to cut down on government spending? Who would believe that? Would anybody?" Good question, Peg.

The President's plan ignores the thousands of doctors who daily reduce patients' bills and underbill patients who are in financial trouble. How are you going to do that when the plan is run by government bureaucrats? Portions of the proposed bill seem to indicate that such a practice by doctors truly trying to help their patients out could be criminalized. Pseudo-intellectuals who run the government have ideas about which risks you take and how they should limit your access to treatment. Reaching old age will now become one of those "risks." The silly non-Harvard average Joe who eats too much, or smokes, may find his access severely limited or entirely eliminated. And while the bill takes the right of choice away from the citizens, one "right to choose" that is mandated is the right to choose a paid-for abortion. Not a popular position.

Obamacare has now become the lead in a long litany of programs that the American people are not only questioning, but actively opposing. TARP, Cap and Tax, and Czars in every closet are turning the molehill of oppostion into a mountain. And leading the chorus of "we know what's best for you" is Barack Obama, singing off-tune and forgetting the words. Instead of sounding like an operatic diva, he's beginning to sound more and more like Roseanne Barr singing the national anthem.

Obama summed up his skewed sense of logic, facts, and American freedom by saying he might be like the person who might not buy health insurance if left to his own devices. If he gets hit by a bus, "the rest of us have to pay for it." First, I would hope that the owner of the bus chose to purchase insurance. Second, it doesn't explain how the rest of us are not going to pay for it anyway, with or without national health insurance. If he gets hit by a bus, but he's also an overweight smoker does he get less care, thus "costing the rest of us" less? It's called "choice," Mr. President. You want to take it away from us, but you can't explain why your way is better.