Not even David Brooks, as much as he adores the president (and his pants), can avert his eyes or sugar-coat the advice any longer. Risking the descent of hordes of White House spinners, he lambasts the president and his enablers who refuse to see the fundamental and spectacular collapse of the effort to sell ObamaCare. Brooks details the president’s polling slide and the collapse of support for the president’s health-care plan. He disparages the idea of reconciliation to jam the now unpopular bill through the Senate and swipes at the critics of Peter Orszag.

Brooks observes of the administration:

From the stimulus to health care, it has joined itself at the hip to the liberal leadership in Congress. The White House has failed to veto measures, like the pork-laden omnibus spending bill, that would have demonstrated independence and fiscal restraint. By force of circumstances and by design, the president has promoted one policy after another that increases spending and centralizes power in Washington.

[. . .]

This is a country that has always been suspicious of centralized government. This is a country that has just lived through an economic trauma caused by excessive spending and debt. Most Americans still admire Obama and want him to succeed. But if he doesn’t proceed in a manner consistent with the spirit of the nation and the times, voters will find a way to stop him.

The president’s challenge now is to halt the slide. That doesn’t mean giving up his goals. It means he has to align his proposals to the values of the political center: fiscal responsibility, individual choice and decentralized authority.

The only hitch is that Brooks, after all that, doesn’t quite recognize what we are dealing with. He declares that retreating on health care “won’t mean giving up [Obama’s] goals.” But isn’t it apparent from all Brooks has told us that Obama’s goal is the growth and centralization of government power? Really, as Brooks aptly documents, each of  Obama’s efforts, “by force of circumstances and design,” has been a big-government power grab.

So it may be harder than it seems to align Obama’s proposals to the “values of the political center.” It simply isn’t clear — and we have zero evidence to support the theory — that in his heart he’s interested in “fiscal responsibility, individual choice and decentralized authority.” From everything Obama has done, it appears he opposes these principles.

Gosh, it might just be that Obama isn’t a “Burkean” after all.