Pull the Plug

Peggy Noonan again. *Sigh*. Once all rhapsodic about Obama's "cool" and swagger, she continues to see the light, although sometimes still through a filter.

Her topic this week is ... ObamaCare. She thinks he should pull the plug. What a novel idea.

I'm mocking her sudden-come-to-clarity, but she does make a couple of nice points in this week's piece. She suggests that Obama knew it would be a messy boondoggle from the beginning, what with all the bills in committee and markup...that it would be picked apart by the public and debate would be hot. Then ObamaMan would swoop in, clean up the mess (as he has been known to say) and pull it all together thus saving the day for ObamaCare.

But it got ugly..."It all got hotter, quicker than the White House expected. The many plans of Congress congealed in the public mind into one plan, and the one plan became a poison pool. The president is now immersed in it," she says. Yes, I'd say he is drowning in it.

She makes a good point when she says it is all already lost: "Here's another thing that didn't work. (I write as if health-care reform or insurance reform or whatever it's called this week is already a loss, a historic botch, because it is. Even if the White House wins, they lose, because the cost in terms of public trust and faith was too high.)"

This is absolutely true. He's lost public faith and trust. Oh, the die-hards are still there. But he's leaked independent voters like a sieve.

Noonan suggests he could regain part of his popularity by pulling the plug and admitting he screwed up. Show some humility. This will NEVER happen. Humility is one trait this president does NOT have. He's never shown one iota of it. On top of that, this is all personal to him; it's not about the American people or what's best for America. He sees the ire and anger of town-hall-Americans as being against HIM rather than ObamaCare. He won't let them win.

Noonan concludes with this though, with which I couldn't agree more: "It's not especially pleasurable to see history held hostage to ideological vanity, but it's not the first time. And if they keep it up, they'll help solve the president's problem. He'll have a Republican congress soon enough."

Read the whole article here.