Obama Fails to Sell Health Care

"See if you can hit this one, Mr President."


To borrow the old baseball metaphor that Washington types love to use, the President needed to hit a home run tonight in his health care press conference. The White House press corps did their best to help by lobbing up a bunch of inane softballs. Nevertheless, the President hit one foul ball after another.

I think the toughest (and most pertinent) question of the night was when one reporter asked, "What's the rush?" The President disingenuously explained that he keeps getting letters from private citizens about their health problems and that deadlines are necessary to get things done in Washington.

Of course, everyone knows that the real reason is because as more and more Americans learn more details about this plan, the fewer are in favor of it. The numbers are dropping rapidly, just like Obama's approval ratings. Already over 50% of the public has decided this is not such a good idea.

Obam's long winded answers drifted off into minutia that could hardly have succeeded in holding the viewer's attention, and that is exactly the problem. This plan consists of over 1,000 pages of minutia, and common sense says that in any venture that will have such a profound effect on our economy and society, time and scrutiny are what is demanded-just what Obama doesn't want.

One wonders why the vaunted White House press corps can't ask the same pointed questions that Obama got from a blogger this week about one feature of the House bill-that the president was not aware of and could not answer. Or why Obama couldn't get the same question that a member of a town hall meeting in Missouri threw up at hapless Congressman Russ Carnahan (D-MO):

"If it's so good, why doesn't Congress have to be in it?"

Or even the question from a young man in Maryland who pin-pointed Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) about why he would be fined $2,500 every year he didn't have health insurance.

How come nobody asked the President about the testimony this past week of Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf, which refuted the administration's claims about the cost of the health care plan?

The sad fact is that Obama's minions are taking more heat from their common constituents than Obama gets from his fawning White House press corps.

To stop the public opinion slide, Obama needed to do something big tonight and explain in clear terms why Americans need this health care plan of his. In that, he failed, not because he committed a major blooper, but because he just did not rise to the occasion. Even MSNBC's Howard Fineman had to break it to a disappointed left-wing commentator Rachel Maddow on her show that Obama looked tired and missed an important opportunity. In the end, it was Obama's own fault. He sure can't complain about the pitches.