Oh, all right, not really. But the last time I remember the Washington Post quoting a president at length, it was when George Herbert Walker Bush was running for his second term against Bill Clinton. Pres. Bush had undiagnosed Grave’s disease, which makes your thoughts race, and he could not speak in coherent paragraphs.
Anyway, on April 3, Obama gave a 17-plus-minute answer to a question on his recently enacted healthcare law. And the Washington Post reporter, Anne E. Kornblut, was less than reverent in dissecting his peroration:
Toward the end of a question-and-answer session with workers at an advanced battery technology manufacturer, a woman named Doris stood to ask the president whether it was a “wise decision to add more taxes to us with the health care” package.
“We are overtaxed as it is,” Doris said bluntly.
Obama started out feisty. “Well, let’s talk about that, because this is an area where there’s been just a whole lot of misinformation, and I’m going to have to work hard over the next several months to clean up a lot of the misapprehensions that people have,” the president said.
He then spent the next 17 minutes and 12 seconds lulling the crowd into a daze. His discursive answer — more than 2,500 words long — wandered from topic to topic, including commentary on the deficit, pay-as-you-go rules passed by Congress, Congressional Budget Office reports on Medicare waste, COBRA coverage, the Recovery Act and Federal Medical Assistance Percentages (he referred to this last item by its inside-the-Beltway name, “F-Map”). He talked about the notion of eliminating foreign aid (not worth it, he said). He invoked Warren Buffett, earmarks and the payroll tax that funds Medicare (referring to it, in fluent Washington lingo, as “FICA”).
Always fond of lists, Obama ticked off his approach to health care — twice. “Number one is that we are the only — we have been, up until last week, the only advanced country that allows 50 million of its citizens to not have any health insurance,” he said.
A few minutes later he got to the next point, which seemed awfully similar to the first. “Number two, you don’t know who might end up being in that situation,” he said, then carried on explaining further still.
“Point number three is that the way insurance companies have been operating, even if you’ve got health insurance, you don’t always know what you got, because what has been increasingly the practice is that if you’re not lucky enough to work for a big company that is a big pool, that essentially is almost a self-insurer, then what’s happening is, is you’re going out on the marketplace, you may be buying insurance, you think you’re covered, but then when you get sick they decide to drop the insurance right when you need it,” Obama continued, winding on with the answer.
Halfway through, an audience member on the riser yawned.
But Obama wasn’t finished. He had a “final point,” before starting again with another list — of three points.
“What we said is, number one, we’ll have the basic principle that everybody gets coverage,” he said, before launching into the next two points, for a grand total of seven.
His wandering approach might not matter if Obama weren’t being billed as the chief salesman of the health-care overhaul. Public opinion on the bill remains divided, and Democratic officials are planning to send Obama into the country to convince wary citizens that it will work for them in the long run.
It was not evident that he changed any minds at Friday’s event. The audience sat politely, but people in the back of the room began to wander off.
Even Obama seemed to recognize that he had gone on too long. He apologized — in keeping with the spirit of the moment, not once, but twice. “Boy, that was a long answer. I’m sorry,” he said, drawing nervous laughter that sounded somewhat like relief as he wrapped up.
But, he said: “I hope I answered your question.”
I predict that as Obama goes on the road he will deliver similar performances and get similar coverage because what he reveals about himself is both frightening and appalling. First of all, Obama displays his laziness and dislike of mastering policy. He lurches from buzz phrase to jargon, apparently believing he is dazzling the crowd. This is an alarming level of self-deception. Even modestly well-informed people know immediately he has no idea what he is saying. Second, Obama reveals his contempt for the intelligence of his audiences and/or his absolute faith in his ability to snow people. Either way, that’s not reassuring. Third, people are onto Obama’s habit of filibustering to run out the clock. He’s already had problems attracting crowds and this will accelerate the trend — well, until ACORN and the SEIU are hired to fill the chairs.
I’m looking forward to stories comparing what Obama says is in his healthcare legislation and what’s really in it, and what he said was in it that isn’t. Definitely America has a fee-vah and all it needs to see the wisdom of swallowing Obamacare is more cowbell:
Eek! — the Blue Oyster Cult song title is a little too appropriate: “Don’t Fear the Reaper.”
Oh, and I hope Ms. Kornblut likes her new beat monitoring the police scanner on the graveyard shift.
