Cruel Summer

Not enough beers to improve Obama's "poor health"

If you're president of the United States and the best headline to wake up to is the menu of beers that you'll be serving later today, it really demonstrates that your agenda is rapidly spiraling out of control. 

And even the beer story is kind of, ahem, glass half-full kind of thing.  

Everything else though is a half-empty proposition -- at best.  

All the polls released this week show a president who -- only a couple months ago -- stood as a "post-partisan" figure overwhelming the political landscape seemingly withering as the summer heat increases. The 60 percent job approval rating has faded: While the CBS/New York Times poll puts him at 58 percent approval, NBC/Wall Street Journal and all others average around 53 percent.   

The big problem, however, is that what the president wants to be his signature issue -- health-care reform -- is in even worse shape than his own numbers. 

While some headlines suggest that things are coming together -- liberal House committee chairman Henry Waxman cut a deal with the moderate Blue Dog caucus -- the outline of that compromise carries with it the likelihood of an eventual defeat.  How can that be?  

Simple.  The reason Obama wanted a congressional vote before the recess is because he knows that four weeks out of Washington can cause many members to fall prey to the forces of the status quo.  Indeed, the arguments against an overhaul have already broken into the public consciousness, as the NBC poll notes:  

As Congress works on its legislation and as Obama campaigns to get an overhaul enacted, 42 percent now say that the president’s plan is a bad idea, which is a 10-point increase since last month. Thirty-six percent say it’s a good idea.

In addition, 39 percent — a plurality — believe that Obama’s plan would result in the quality of their health care getting worse. That’s 15-point jump since April.

And just 41 percent approve of the president’s job on health care, which is nearly identical to Bill Clinton’s scores from 1994, when he failed to get Congress to pass health care reform.

The debate has gone in almost exactly the same direction as the Clinton-care effort 15 years ago -- even as Obama tried to do exactly the opposite of Bill Clinton. Obama ceded the crafting to Congress, rather than doing everything in secret, a la Hillary Clinton.  Ironically, the Republicans were still able to use the same argument:  Heck, the chart the GOP used this year to mock the Obama plan is nearly identical to the one they used against the Hillary Clinton effort

These tactics -- and arguments -- end up working because most people like the health care they have -- because most people get it through their work.  Yes, it's not perfect, but it is sufficient. And fear of the unknown is a powerful emotion. That fear can be easily appealed to.

It's also the case that the president has fallen victim both to circumstances partly out of his control -- and a serious unforced error that occurred at the worst possible moment. 

The circumstances out of his control was an economic meltdown. He believed that warranted a big stimulus package. But, combined with numerous bailouts, the cost became too much for the public to deal with. And so, now the biggest fear for the public is government spending and the deficit.  They add both the fear of losing their own health care to the cost a new system might incur -- and you have the perfect storm making an overhaul very tough going.

And, of course, in the middle of this, the president made a major stumble last week with his press conference. His answer on the Gates-Crowley encounter did two things -- 1) got him "off message" on health-care when he could least afford it, and, 2) plunged the president into a racial issue not of his own making

His "beer summit" this evening may ease the fallout on the latter, but Obama must wonder -- at what cost? Just two-thirds of the way through a very tough summer, he faces another long month trying to revive a health-care reform effort that the American people no longer seem to want. A couple of beers can't fix that. 

New York writer Robert A. George blogs at Ragged Thots. Follow him on Twitter. 

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