That distinction belongs to Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook” fiasco. For using the bully pulpit to bully yourself, Nixon’s noxious self-nailing ranks as a gold medal performance unlikely ever to be equaled. But President Obama’s outing last week surely takes the silver. By Sunday, Rasmussen was reporting that 40 percent of likely voters… 40 percent… voiced strong disapproval of the President (versus 29 percent who strongly approve). What happened?
Some of it was Mr. Obama’s incredible blunder about the Harvard professor and the Cambridge police officers. As National Public Radio’s Juan Williams has said, the President called into question his role as a racial healer, one of the most appealing promises of his election. But by the time he took that final question of the evening, he had already failed in his main mission, to boost his health reform initiative.
When it came to health care, throughout the evening the President protested too much and offered little beyond assertion to build his case. The effect was to confirm a skeptical public’s fears that his version of health reform is a breathtaking budget buster that would end up taking away current coverage that polls show most of us want left untouched. In this context Mr. Obama’s disclaimers about tax increases became entirely unbelievable. And as others have pointed out, talk about focusing doctors on what works suggested that government designees would step firmly between doctors and patients once Congress gave the green light.
An Administration operative is quoted on today’s Politico.com saying that the Administration plans to put the status quo on trial while the opposition plans to put the Administration’s program on trial. If he is right, the Administration will lose.
The simple reason is that the Administration is not the only communicator in town or around the nation. The public already knows that there are plenty of good reforms on the table that can bring health care costs down without an increase in government spending.
Here is a sampling: using the Federal government’s sovereignty over interstate commerce to allow insurance plans sold in one state to be sold in all; medical malpractice reform to restore rule of law to this troubled field and remove from the nation’s health care bill what are effectively ransom payments to our dysfunctional trial bar; making available to individuals and small businesses the tax breaks that corporations receive when they buy health insurance for employees; expanding Health Savings Accounts, to give those buying health services the power to ask, “What does this cost? What are the alternatives?”
Apparently the Administration’s PR plan of the moment is to shout louder – more media events, more TV and radio ads, more door knocking, more web wizardry. They have the money. They have the special interests with their organizers and media savvy consultants. Maybe it will work. But content matters, too. And Wednesday night’s fumbling press performance suggested that even the President may lack faith in his message’s content.
