I haven’t seen the ratings for how many people watched President Obama’s primetime snooze conference but I can’t believe that those who watched it changed their minds to support this monstrosity.

I think that because I’m getting the sense that people are just getting tired of seeing President Obama make the same tired appeals on health care. What struck me is that he still can’t articulate what his plan is. He hasn’t shown he understands the myriad of components involved in health care.

Another thing that’s becoming apparent is that he’s crying wolf again. Again, we’re being told that the economy will collapse unless we get something done ASAP. That’s insulting because people are questioning whether getting something done ASAP will produce a bill that gets it right the first time.

This isn’t like setting the wrong trade policy or bad tax policy. Getting health care wrong is a life-and-death matter. We get this wrong and it’ll take a generation to rebuild the private sector health insurance infrastructure, if it can be done at all.

I appreciate Captain Ed’s take on last night’s snooze conference:

When a president calls a prime-time press conference, it traditionally means that the White House has some new strategy, message, or policy creation that they want to reveal with a big flourish. For at least the second time in a row, Barack Obama demanded valuable prime-time real estate and the nation’s attention in order to repeat the same lines he’s used for the last two months on health care. Obama failed to present a single new idea, proposal, or even argument that had not already been floated from Obama himself and the White House in the full-court press over the last 10 days in Obama’s media appearances.

President Obama is a man confident in his ability to change people’s minds. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s justification for that confidence. In fact, I’d argue that his calling for network time to say the same thing another time without explaining in detail why his plan is the best plan just causes people to tune out.

We were told that we had to pass ARRA ASAP or the economy would shift from crisis to catastrophe. The bill was passed and the economy’s trajectory hasn’t noticeably changed. We were told that we had to close Gitmo. President Obama can’t even get this congress to appropriate money to start the task without him giving them a detailed plan for where the hardest of the hardened terrorists still there would go.

Finally, people remember that it was President Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who said that it’s important to not take advantage of a good crisis. People are questioning whether President Obama’s push for health care reform isn’t just another attempt to “take advantage of a good crisis.”

The stakes are too high to not get this right. President Obama still hasn’t told us why rushing the process will produce a worthwhile outcome. Until he does that, the American people will ignore his arguments. They’re getting tired of this president.

Technorati: Reform, Health Care, President Obama, Obama Fatigue, News Conference, Rahm Emanuel, Crisis

Cross-posted at California Conservative