What Was Obama Thinking?

Obama was thinking he could just miracle up a solution and he failed miserably.

Tunku Varadarajan writes:

What on earth was President Obama thinking when he decided to convene this weird little powwow?

Was he trying to make the Republicans look bad—retrograde ogres who would leave uninsured babies to die in their cribs? If so, he didn’t succeed at all. On the contrary, they came out of it looking rather alert and grownup.

Was he trying to establish—perhaps in all sincerity—that the differences between the two sides were not unbridgeable, and that there was nothing that separated the two that couldn’t be resolved by a good, cathartic heart-to-heart on TV? If so, he didn’t succeed. On the contrary, he gave the Republicans a national stage on which to air their disagreements with the health-care bill—and air them they did, with something approaching panache.

Did he believe that he would, somehow, by his sheer charisma, “win it” for his side? If so, he didn’t succeed. On the contrary, he may have chipped his image in significant ways….

It was, instead, a simulacrum of a debate, a pretend-conversation, one in which Obama established, yet again, his command over fact and detail, but in which he also revealed reflexive superciliousness, intolerance of different opinions, and a shortness of patience unbecoming of a president. (He also showed that he’s a tedious clock-Nazi, cutting people off all the time, while showing no inclination to edit himself.)

What was so striking about the summit was the preparedness of the Republicans. All of them had done their homework: Lamar Alexander, Tom Coburn, Jon Kyl, John McCain, Dave Camp, John Barrasso, and Paul Ryan.

The Democrats, by contrast, suffered from an acute case of “anecdotitis” (is it a preexisting condition?): Almost all of them delivered speeches that boasted a story or two meant to tug at the heart….

…But there could be no escape from the one, fundamental difference that divides the two sides: The Democrats want this bill and the Republicans don’t. That—and the latter’s preference for market solutions and the former’s rejection of them—ensured that the summit was a total waste of our time and Obama’s.

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