'The fault, dear Barack, is not in our stars, But in ourselves'

Victor Davis Hanson at The Corner wonders whether the Blue-Chip Obama brand has been tarnished.

"Take away the rhetoric and charisma, and this same absence of preparation, professional research, and focused public defense seems to apply to almost everything Obama has offered, from more stimulus and more deficit spending to cash for clunkers and cap and trade."

Liberal columnists decrying the Obama administration’s supposed lack of partisan fortitude and eagerness for a nasty fight for health care seem oddly detached from reality. The opposition to Obamacare would have gone nowhere had the president offered a concise plan, had his team kept repeating four or five logical and easily understandable talking points, and had he prepared a few pat answers to the more controversial elements of the plan, from the public option to so-called “end of life” panels to treatment of illegal aliens and the real cost.

Instead, Obama and his advisers, in lazy fashion, outsourced the plan to the partisan left-wingers of the Democratic party who are key House chairs. They in turn offered up a 1,000-page legalese mess, which the administration’s key players never read, and which Obama arrogantly thought he could wing through in a few weeks with his “hope and change” / “trust me” cadences.

Once a few citizens at town halls started to call them on it, it quickly became clear not just that Obama’s health-care reform was an effort to emulate in the long run the failed Canadian system, but far more importantly, that none of its defenders were able to explain, much less defend, the plan.

(More...)