Remember those descriptions of the young Obama, woken by his tireless mother at four in the morning to study? It's another Lincoln story. However, Obama's hard-won education produced a man who appears to think -- to know -- everyone can learn and understand if they just try.
Whether they try or not (I think Fox, among others, has facilitated a generation of "don't try, just think as we want you to think"), America has learned very little about the proposed health care reform.
Economist Uwe Reinhardt doesn't think most Americans as dumber than dirt, Instead, he believes that while President Obama has been a superb orator, he failed as a teacher. He needs to present his policy goals in ways that Americans, driving distractedly to and from work with the radio on, can absorb them.
Here's Reinhardt nailing Obama's failure in an interview with NPR. This health care economist believes the Senate bill is still worth passing.
Uwe Reinhardt: The idea of taking the Senate bill, have the House endorse it and then pass it into law is not as far-fetched as even the president seems to make it appear. Because the Senate bill has many of the things Americans want. Americans need help buying health insurance. Well, it does that. Americans don't want the premiums based on their own health status. The bill outlaws that. Americans don't want recision -- that is, having their insurance cancelled after an illness strikes. This bill outlaws that.
NPR: But it's not as though the administration, or the Democrats in the House or Senate, have not been describing these bills for the past year. We've heard a tremendous amount. The president talks about them every week, it seems.
Reinhardt: Well, there's a difference between oratory and pedagogy. Oratory means you stir the emotions of people. Pedagogy means you actually teach people carefully. I haven't seen, either from the Senate -- which is of course not even their job -- or from this president an attempt to really explain to the people what's in the bill. I give speeches and I have that in two slides. I can explain it really quite simply. I'm stunned that the president has not either thought about it or taken the time to do it -- to tell people, "These are the things that bug you, and here is prescisely what this bill does about it." Everything that was communicated seemed that there was chaos, that there were sleazy deals. Of course there is log-rolling! Log-rolling in the Congress is an old American tradition. It wasn't invented by the Senate bill. I don't know why the president never became the teacher of the people. He always resorts to either of two modes. One is oratory and the other is sort of graduate school seminars. It's fine for eggheads like me but not good for people who drive in a car and need different pedagogic devices. They need anecdotes. They need metaphors. None of that the president uses.
NPR: Let's say the Republicans say, "You know what's near the top of our list when it comes to health care. It's tort reform. It's reforming the system of malpractice insurance in the country. President Obama only went so far as to say, "Okay, maybe some pilot projects to look at alternative ways dispute resolution. Are the Democrats capable, or would it be worth it even it's a small share of health care to meet the Republicans halfway on that question?
Reinhardt: I think they should have. I think at the very least it was discourteous not to have done it. But I believe the recent CBO report on malpractice shows it would actually yield savings if we had major reform. There are some great ideas out there. They've been out there for twenty or more years. It's called "alternative dispute resolution." It takes this roulette wheel of jury rooms out of the proceedings and separates whether a patient got hurt and needs help from whether the physician was negligent. All of these ideas are out there and for a comprehensive health care bill not to have raised that facet of it is actually rather inexcusable.
Or rather arrogant?
Whether arrogant or not, President Obama is paying a high political price for not explaining his health care proposals, for not bothering to connect with the American people -- for not out-foxing Fox. He could do it if he wanted to. And he'd better...
A new poll, just out, sponsored by NPR and conducted by Democratic strategist Stan Greenberg with Republican strategist Glenn Bolger, warns:
...The poll of 800 likely voters also finds that opinion has soured on Obama's No. 1 legislative priority this year: an overhaul of the country's health care system.
The poll holds plenty of danger signs for the Democrats. In one indicator studied closely by both parties ahead of midterm elections, likely voters chose an unnamed Republican candidate by 5 percentage points over the Democrat on a hypothetical congressional ballot. And, Bolger points out, that edge is more pronounced among people whose interest in the midterms is high.
"So while it's a 5-point lead overall, among the most interested voters, that lead doubles," Bolger says. "And we saw that take effect in Virginia; we saw it took effect in [the] New Jersey gubernatorial race; and we saw it take effect in the Massachusetts Senate race as well.
"The poll shows likely voters evenly divided about Obama's job performance: While 49 percent approve, 48 percent disapprove. And Greenberg's Democrats have to be worried by the fact that by 2-1, voters think the country is on the wrong track.
