Congressmen travelled back home this weekend, breaking for about a month before resuming debate on Cap-and-Trade and the health care overhaul. During that time, a PR war will be waged with PACs and special interest groups on both sides trying to turn public opinion enough to force representatives into voting a certain way. Fortunately, we have on our side the wonderful messaging machine that is the Obama Administration.

Regular folk don’t understand the ramifications of the global warming bill and the stimulus is still being wasted, so health care reform would really be the only thing that the President could hang his hat on about a year after his election, counting how long it would take any bill to get all the way to his desk from now. Realizing that the passage of his main domestic priority was in jeopardy and that public opinion was slowly going against him, Obama made a desperate play at ramming the legislation through before the recess.

His prime-time press conference, with his smallest audience so far, did nothing to help the passage of the bill, and may have hurt it. He continued to stay with generalities and calls for blind trust that have been causing doubts since the discussion of the bill began. In addition to the infamous conference call where he claimed not to be familiar with one of the most controversial sections of the legislation, his seemingly two-faced approach – he’ll tell you that insurance is the devil, but he’ll still let you keep yours; you can pick your own doctor, unless you’re one of the 2/3 of Americans who will be forced onto a public plan – has left even his most ardent supporters questioning his intentions.

Add to this the obviously controversial aspects of some parts of the bill and you get a recipe for disaster. Of course people are going to raise objections and ask for guarantees when you threaten to bypass the Hyde Amendment. Similarly, sloppily raising the prospect of enacting Oregon-style encouraged euthanasia on the whole nation is like playing with fire. And yet, those closest to the negotiations make a liar out of Obama every time they admit that the Democrats are in fact looking to include these provisions in the finalized version.

And still he remains the bill’s chief spokesman, appearing at town halls in several different states just last week. To explain all of this away, he repeatedly tells audiences to trust him to do the right thing once the bill is passed, though no one knows nor trusts what his version of that will be. It doesn’t help any that he is echoing the most hated person in DC every time he says it. Here’s a question: what do you think is more offensive to the people he means to win over – that he tells them robotically to simply trust all of these important details to him, or that he dismisses the utter disregard for the Hyde Amendment as just “details” and tells us not to get bogged down in them?

Either way, the important part is that people are being pushed away and brought back to the reality of politics. Obama is no more a hero of the people and harbinger of change than any other politician. He is adamant that we must rush through this health bill right now, even though it won’t take effect until 2013, just so he can save face. When George Bush was pushing through legislation, Obama was all for Congress waiting several days to assess and debate every last page. Now that he’s in charge and pushing for another massive government power-grab, we need to trust him and just hand over the keys to everything.

We knew his façade had to fade away eventually; we’re just fortunate that it is happening in front of our very eyes during the realization of his most destructive ambition to date. Few lawmakers could even dream of burning through as much political capital as he has in six months, let alone envision the nightmare of polarizing the nation so early into one’s tenure.

Another President might have kept his nose out of other people’s business and withheld stupid comments and beer summits, focusing on the pressing issues of the day.  Any other liberal leader might have pushed health care reform first, snuck in a public option without too much of the well-publicized strong-arming. Someone else might have actually succeeded in subjecting Americans to this bizarro reform. In this one instance, thank God we have Obama as President.

Last 5 posts by Gideon D'Assandro

• The Reality of Racial Politics - August 17th, 2009
• Health Care Coverup - July 23rd, 2009
• The Suppressed EPA Report’s Effect on Healthcare - July 12th, 2009
• Social Conservatism Going Forward - July 5th, 2009
• GOP Finally Pushing Cohesive Message - June 28th, 2009