Blue and red pills. Doctors taking out tonsils for nothing. He doesn’t attack Republicans. He didn’t show all his health-care meetings on C-SPAN, but he’s stuck to his transparency promises. One after another, Obama uncorked howler after howler last night. Having missed it live, I had the chance to TIVO and watch, trying to replay portions to understand what he was saying. That didn’t help. He wasn’t explaining a plan, because he doesn’t have a plan. He wasn’t frankly communicating anything. As Mark Halperin (hardly a harsh critic of the president) explained:
What sacrifices will Americans have to make under his proposals? Why hasn’t the White House been more transparent about the policymaking process, as then-candidate Obama promised? Would he insist that members of Congress face the same limits on choice and access to care as the people getting their insurance from the new public health care plan he advocates? Those were among the excellent questions hurled at the president, and he countered only with partial responses and vague rhetoric.
If he wants to get some sort of plan through Congress, Obama has no choice but to continue his full-court press of public advocacy for the rest of the summer and into the fall. It is true, as he points out, that much legislative progress — almost exclusively managed by his own party — already has been made. And he is correct that the current health care system is both fiscally and morally unsustainable. But his high-profile primetime performance, with insufficient specificity, scant new data, and too many unanswered questions, likely did little to help his cause.
Maybe he is rattled or tired. Politico wondered whether he was “even trying.” Perhaps he doesn’t have any answers and thought he could wing it. But in some ways, it was an hour advertisement for the proposition that we should take a month or two off and then come back and engage in a real national debate when some of these questions can be answered. The press didn’t do a bad job last night, but we may need a new format.
Why not a national debate? Not in the sense that everyone talks about it, but a real debate. These are hard questions, and no one expects the president to have all the answers, so he can bring along Peter Orszag or Nancy Pelosi. Or both. Obama and his press secretary have been calling out an unnamed “Republican strategist” who has suggested we “kill” health care. But I’m fairly sure Bill Kristol would be willing to reveal himself and come to a debate or two. And he can bring aides as well.
No one is better on this than Yuval Levin. And Keith Hennessy would be good, too. And let’s get answers to those questions Halperin lists and to many others. Better yet, Obama can explain why he thinks doctors are preying on kids with allergies and performing unneeded operations. (How sorry is the AMA they went along with ObamaCare?) And he can once again tell us why a public plan won’t force private insurers from the market.
Sometimes less is more. In the case of the press conference, none would have been best. So step one: Congress go on vacation. Step two: Let’s start the debates.
What we have is an utter failure by the president and Congress to have an intelligent discussion of a huge policy initiative.
