At the Huffington Post, Glenn Altschuler offers the following tips — without irony — to Barack Obama:

Obama, for example, might have personalized the health care debate, by appearing with terminally-ill patients denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions, instead of standing on the sidelines while right-wingers denounced “death panels,” and playing Hamlet about an abstraction, “the public option.” He might have visited the home of a single mom, thrown out of work through no fault of her own, to dramatize the impact of Republican resistance to extending unemployment benefits. To quash rumors that he’s a closet Muslim, the president might speak out about how prayer and faith sustain him — and see to it that cameras capture him emerging from church services, with his family in tow.

Sure. What’s stopping him now? He could spend the holidays with the First Family in a Gitmo cell to highlight the cramped conditions. He could inject himself with a deadly virus to focus on the need for universal health care. He could play one-on-one with a victim of radiation poisoning to point out the importance of a nuclear-free world . . .

Instead of turning the presidency into a depressing sketch-comedy show, Mr. Altschuler might want to think about the kinds of unappealing policies that require such exploitative theatrics.