Cowboy Confessional

Obama and company overlooked two important realities in their attempt to rectally insert health insurance intervention into America’s posterior.

Obama’s major political malpractice was attempting a third bum’s rush. Haste in flushing money through bowls of the financial system might have been necessary given alleged urgencies from the sub-prime mortgage implosion. Sensing opportunity, Obama did as Bush had – he generated a sense of emergency through false diagnosis in order to garner public support for a massive spending bill. As American’s were collectively suffering from economic fallout, any proffered scheme to stimulate the economy sounded like good medicine. In both instances, rhetoric matched the situation – both were matters of economics and both were about as pleasant as a prison cell prostate exam.

But like a child who snacks until doubled over with a stomach ache, Obama dipped his hand into the cookie jar once too often. Obama tried to create a sense of urgency over health insurance in order to pass market intervening legislation. With over 85% of the nation insured, and most of the rest being uninsured by choice, no authentic urgency existed. Obama’s misguided proposals could be studied at relative leisure, perhaps while sitting in your doctor’s waiting room for the requisite four hours.

Yet Barack insisted that thousands of pages of unread legislation be passed within a month. Doctor Obama was rushing an otherwise healthy patient into the operating room to remove its brain.

Obama cried wolf when no wolf was present. Bush cried wolf when an economic wolf was at the door. Obama cried wolf days after entering the White House, though the proximity of the wolf was in question and Obama aimed his popgun into the air. With health insurance there was no wolf. Perhaps some varmints were in the yard, but a few plinks with a .30 caliber will chase away all those pesky trail lawyers (shame John Edwards was politically neutered by his own hand).

Inciting panic over non-problems that lacked authentic urgency caused swing voters to pause. The messenger was no longer believable and thus the message itself became suspect. Obama accelerated his stultification by altering his faux fear focus, switching from evil insurance companies to evil Republicans to evil economics to evil Congress (at least he got that last one right). Voters will listen to arguments about real problems, but they see scams when the nature of the problem is changed more frequently than grandma’s colostomy bag.

What did not change were American attitudes toward their own insurance.

Recent polls show that over 80% of Americans are satisfied with their health care. They may not be ecstatic with their providers, but are served well enough that omnipotent intervention is unwelcome. When 85% of Americans are insured and 80% are content, change is a tough sell. Obama’s attempt to spook contented voters generated suspicion more substantial than America’s rapidly expanding waistline.

Maybe obese American’s instinctively distrust skinny politicians. Obama can fix that by kicking his cigarette habit. He’ll put on 100 pounds before the next election, increasing his curb weight to 198.

When working moms arrive at town hall meetings with 1,000 pages of legislation under their arms – indexed and highlighted – you know that deep suspicions are pustulating. Learning that she has read the bill and her attending representative has not causes suspicion to become contagious. When representatives quarantine themselves by cancelling town hall meetings, an epidemic of dissatisfaction is ready to erupt.

Mockery is a good gauge of public sentiment. When emails like the one below begin circulating, then the battle has been decided.

Obama’s health care plan will be written by a committee whose head says he doesn’t understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn’t read it, signed by a president who smokes, funded by a treasury chief who did not pay his taxes, overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that is nearly broke and whose bureaucracy has never brought anything in under budget.

What possibly could go wrong?

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This entry was posted by Guy Smith on Friday, August 21st, 2009 at 11:04 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.