There has been a lot of commentary on President Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress last night. There is one area in particular I want to focus on.
In his speech, Obama said this:

But what we have also seen in these last months is the same partisan spectacle that only hardens the disdain many Americans have toward their own government. Instead of honest debate, we have seen scare tactics. Some have dug into unyielding ideological camps that offer no hope of compromise. Too many have used this as an opportunity to score short-term political points, even if it robs the country of our opportunity to solve a long-term challenge. And out of this blizzard of charges and counter-charges, confusion has reigned. Well the time for bickering is over. The time for games has passed. Now is the season for action. Now is when we must bring the best ideas of both parties together, and show the American people that we can still do what we were sent here to do. Now is the time to deliver on health care. … Some of people’s concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost.

This is a case of what is known as projection. It is by now hard for one person to keep up with all the false, misleading, or fantastic claims President Obama has made about his efforts to nationalize our health-care system. They include, but are not limited to, Obama’s claim that the reforms he has endorsed would cut the cost of health care (they would increase them); that they would not add to the deficit (they would add hugely to it); that Medicare benefits would not be cut (they most certainly would); that eliminating “waste and fraud” is enough to cover their proposed reductions in future Medicare spending (the claim is risible); that under his reform, “if you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan, period” (millions would not); that his plan would not mean government funding for abortion (it would).

It is not enough for Obama to repeat his false claims, day after day, speech after speech. No, he must also portray himself as America’s Socrates, our voice of reason amidst the angry mob, an intrepid truth teller, a singularly unifying and visionary figure, and a man astonishingly free from the ideological baggage that defines his critics. He views himself as the adult in a world of children.

This is all quite silly. Obama is, in almost every respect, the opposite of what he portrays himself to be. He is a divisive, polarizing figure, among the most divisive and polarizing we have ever seen. He has shown no interest at all in reaching across the aisle and working with the opposition party. He is an orthodox liberal through and through. He denigrates his critics and questions their motives. He has made the health-care debate more muddled, more confused, and less honest. He has hardened the disdain many Americans have toward their government. And he is increasing cynicism among the polity.

He is also a man of astonishing arrogance. “I am not the first President to take up this cause [health care],” Obama said last night, “but I am determined to be the last.”

The last president to take up the issue of health care? Are we to take from this that Obama’s plan will be so perfect that this issue—among the most complicated public policy issues of all— will be solved now and forever more?

What is most remarkable, and in some ways most unsettling, is that President Obama seems to believe all this. Even as he has, in the span of eight months, lost more support than any president before him, he continues to view himself in almost mythical terms. None of this, of course, was ever warranted. But by now his act has worn thin, his posturing and hectoring beyond tiresome.

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