Obama Recognizes He Must Lead on Health Care

Barack Obama's most ardent critics would have us believe that his bumbling of the health-care reform push -- and, yes, he has bumbled it -- will doom his presidency.

The critics would, of course, be wrong.

That does not mean, however, that their claims and charges are being dismissed by the White House.

Hope, Caught Up in a Sea of Obstruction

Here's the situation: President Obama maneuvered a stimulus package through Congress that, after being reduced to attract additional senators, has proven insufficient to stimulate the economy. Now, given the political calculus, it would be nearly impossible for him to introduce an additional boost. He also proposed a regulatory scheme for Wall Street that was so riddled with compromises and concessions that it was unlikely to prevent another economic meltdown.

Revisit Carter's Energy Speech

Thirty years ago, on July 15, 1979, President Jimmy Carter went on national television to give a jolting speech. Billed as an address about the "energy crisis" -- the recent cutoff of Iranian fuel that generated long and angry gas lines at home -- it wound up lashing out at the American way of life. Carter decried Americans' "self-indulgence and consumption" as well as their "fragmentation and self-interest." This was a "crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will," he asserted.

Seeing Obama as Norwegians See Him

I just returned from a research trip to Norway where the people I interviewed often brought up the topic of our new President. The first was Kristin Clemet, the director of a conservative think tank. "This spring on a delegation to Washington I was struck again," she said, "by how different the political spectrum is in Norway from your country. Here, Obama would be on the right wing." I checked her view with others -- academics, politicians, activists all over the Norwegian spectrum -- and all but one agreed.

Franken, the Fight, and the Wellstone Seat

Congratulations to Al Franken!

Thanks for taking down the pestiferous Norm Coleman, who had usurped the seat of Paul Wellstone and who had refused to give it up for way too long.

Good riddance, Norm Coleman.

And take that, Bill O’Reilly, the big bully who trashed Franken at every opportunity, and then some.

Franken is also to be praised for his pioneering work in progressive talk radio, having launched Air America when many, like O’Reilly, said it couldn’t be done.

Who Sits at the Health-Reform Table?

President Obama held a town hall on Health Care Reform last week, broadcast nationwide on ABC with Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer. Once again, even though a majority of the public and now even a majority of doctors in the US favor a single-payer system, single payer was still off the table.

The president of the AMA, which opposes single payer, nowadays representing about a 19 percent minority of doctors, was prominently on display.

Obama, They Want You to Fail

After last year's elections, a Democratic operative told me that if the Democrats got to 59 seats in the Senate, it would be easy to peel off one or two Republicans to pass key legislation like serious health care reform. I was left wondering what political planet he'd been living on for the past three decades.