“After nearly a century of trying?Democratic administrations, Republican administrations?we are closer than ever to bringing more security to the lives of so many Americans. The approach we’ve taken would protect every American from the worst practices of the insurance industry. It would give small businesses and uninsured Americans a chance to choose an affordable health care plan in a competitive market. It would require every insurance plan to cover preventive care…. Still, this is a complex issue, and the longer it was debated, the more skeptical people became. I take my share of the blame for not explaining it more clearly to the American people.”
That’s right, folks. The President’s inability to explain himself clearly is the only reason we’re still discussing this whole health care reform thing. It’s not because of the nearly $1 trillion price tag, the closed-door back-room negotiations, the fuzzy math, or the constitutional infirmities inherent in the various proposals worming their way through Congress. It’s not because we have substantive, and as yet unaddressed, concerns about the treatment of the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly under a system administered by neo-Malthusians and their “comparative effectiveness” model. And it’s certainly not because we’re skeptical that the same people who have bankrupted Social Security and Medicare could run a lemonade stand, let along a full 20% of the American economy, without running it into the ground.
It’s just that we don’t “get it.” We’re just confused from too much Fox News and not enough MSNBC.
Here’s a news flash, Mr. Obama: It’s you who are confused. You have drastically underestimated the intelligence of the American voter. In the face of your big-government schemes designed to “fundamentally transform America,” the people?Democrats and Republicans alike?are recoiling in horror. If you continue to ignore the voice of the people, it’s likely that the next time you stand before our nation’s representatives to deliver a State of the Union speech you will find yourself facing a sea of newly-elected Republican faces, much as your Democratic predecessor did in 1995.
A strong majority of the American public has decided that it doesn’t want the kind of change you are trying to shove down its throat, and no amount of rhetorical flourish is going to change its mind.