Posted by Joseph Y. Calhoun, III

At President Obama’s health care reform inevitability news conference the other day he said:

“it’s clear we are on the precipice of achievement that’s eluded Congresses, presidents for generations — an achievement that will touch the lives of nearly every American.”

As Roger Kimball points out, precipice probably isn’t what he meant:

He probably meant “threshold.” But he said “precipice.” What’s a precipice? According to my dictionary, it’s “the brink of a dangerous situation.” And that’s certainly what we have here with the Democratic proposals to “reform” (what cards these chaps are!) health care.

Innocent mistake or Freudian slip — a verbal slip that “is indicative of an unconscious belief, thought, or emotion”? I incline to the latter. Like Sebastian in The Tempest, Obama spoke “truer than [he] purposed.”

I have wondered for some time now whether President Obama really believes the things he says about health care reform. Even my liberal friends who are in favor of health care reform have trouble defending the bills that are being debated in Congress and see the contradictions in the rhetoric being used to sell it. Surely President Obama does not believe that adding all these people to the formal health care system - drastically increasing demand - will result in lower costs, does he? Surely he doesn’t believe that adding another $1 trillion to the federal budget is the way to reduce the deficit, does he?  I don’t think so because Obama may be a lot of things, but dumb isn’t one of them. I think, like a lot of liberals, that he is so wedded to the idea of universal coverage that he doesn’t actually care what the consequences are. Democrats have been trying to pass some form of universal coverage since FDR and it has now become a party shibboleth - you have to believe in order to be in the party.  

The irony is that the current reform effort has become so unpopular that passing it in anything like the current form will likely do great harm to the Democratic party. The fact is that the vast majority of Americans do not want bigger government and do not want higher taxes to pay for it (see this poll). The current health care reform bills will give us both and voters are unlikely to forget who pushed it through. Passing health care reform will do for the Democratic party what the Iraq war did for the Republican party - please the base and no one else. It appears that neither major party is any good at actually governing in a way that is pleasing to a majority of Americans.

Update: Great line from Howard Kurtz:

That splashing sound you hear is liberals jumping off the health care ship.

Liberals don’t like the bill, moderates don’t like the bill, conservatives don’t like the bill. It almost makes me wonder if it isn’t worth considering…..