In this week's "Health Reform Summit", the President was supposed to be a moderator between the Democrats and Republicans of Congress. In that role, I would think it was his job to build consensus between the two parties so that some kind of common ground on health care reform could be found. But, instead, the American public saw Obama as some kind of petty politician, an antagonist, and not the "leader" who would bring the two sides together.
He would rudely cut off any Republicans if he so much as objected to a single point that they were trying make. As a result, the Democrats got the bulk of the talking time in front of the cameras and the Republicans got the dregs. You could literally see the irritation on Obama's face when the Republicans brought up facts about ObamaCare that he knew would not "not" sit well with the American people. He acted like a king ruling over what he seemed to think was "his" court; using slap-downs as much as possible to channel the direction of the "Summit" in his direction.
To me, Obama showed his lack of management skills. Any, lower tiered manager in business would be better experienced at "team building", establishing synergy, and directing "brainstorming sessions" than was exhibited by the President. The "Summit", itself, showed how partisan he is and how his Democratic colleges have no intention of working with Republicans. It is obvious that the Democrats were intent on using the "Summit" as theater and are still intent on ramming health care through. Being quite familiar with the health care bills in Congress, I saw numerous attempts by Obama to distort the facts about the separate legislation that was passed in each of the Houses. This either showed that Obama was unfamiliar with the details of those bills or that, more than likely, he was intentionally using false facts -- in front of those national cameras -- in an attempt to protect what is very ugly and very bad about either of those bills in Congress.
The Democrats love to point to public opinion polls that say that the majority of Americans want health care reform. And, it is true that they do want some kind of reform. However, those same Democrats totally ignore the more specifically addressed polls where as many as 75% of Americans say they don't want the reform being proposed by Barack Obama and the Democratically-controlled Congress. In fact, in the latest such poll from CNN, 75% were against the current Congressional proposals for health care:
Right now, Obama, Reid and Pelosi are strongly suggesting that they will proceed with Reconciliation -- a circumventing of the super-majority rules of the Senate -- to pass their health care package. I guess I could agree that Reconciliation could be used as a necessary evil if the political minority -- currently the Republicans -- are blocking the passage of a law or laws that the "majority" of people were in favor of. But in this case, a political party is willing to use an abuse of the Senate rules and their dominant power when it runs against the will of most Americans. That, my friends, is a pure example of tyranny!
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