Health Care BS

In an unintentionally hilarious piece about Barack Obama’s continuing evasions on health care reform, John Dickerson advises the readers of Slate that it’s perfectly reasonable to run for president having no clue what to do about one of the most important public policy issues of our time:

Putting out detailed white papers isn’t the only way to show your substance. Obama likes to strut his policy stuff by playing the professor … he’s highly skilled at talking to an audience in a way that exposes his knowledge.

But not everyone has been quaffing the Cool Aid with such gusto. In his introduction, Dickerson quotes someone who saw Obama “strut his policy stuff” last week. She apparently was not impressed by the way he ‘exposes his knowledge.”

A waitress in Des Moines, Iowa, summed [Obama’s] candidacy up this way to me a couple of weeks ago: “Too much fluff.”

Given the choice between ridiculous journalistic rationalizations and the common sense wisdom of an ordinary working person, I think I’ll go with the latter.