Obama: Mistakes? Ummm... No, Not Really. Why Do You Ask?

I'll refer you to this link where they note that the media had a field day when Bush was unable to clearly name any mistakes he'd made, and now, well, this only seems be noted on the right-leaning Washington Examiner. I guess the whole liberal media agrees with Obama.

But let me quote them as far as his answer.

The president began his response haltingly, pointing out that he has actually been in office just two and a half years, and "I'm sure I'll make more mistakes in the next year and a half." But what mistakes has he already made? "There are all sorts of day-to-day issues where I say to myself, oh, I didn't say that right, or I didn't explain this clearly enough," Obama said, "or maybe if I had sequenced this plan first as opposed to that one, maybe it would have gotten done quicker."

But the president mentioned no actual mistakes. Next, he brought up the health care battle, not to admit error but to praise the work of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in pushing the national health care bill through Congress. The fight got pretty complicated, Obama said, "and I've asked myself sometimes is there a way that we could have gotten it done more quickly and in a way that the American people wouldn’t have been so frustrated by it?" Was that possibly a mistake? Obama quickly excused himself. "I’m not sure I could have because there’s a reason why it hadn’t gotten done in a hundred years," the president explained. "It's hard to fix a system as big as health care and as complicated as our health care system." After a good bit of talking, Obama still had not mentioned any mistake or anything he would do differently.

At that point, Obama decided to steer away from the subject of mistakes altogether. "I think the best way to answer the question is what do I feel I still have to get done," he said. He briefly mentioned the deficit and immigration reform.

So, to sum up:

He's upset that he wasn't able to short-circuit the democratic process even more thuggishly and autocratically, and very upset that this business of the public giving its informed consent is long and difficult and sometimes results in the public refusing to give its informed consent.

He wishes he could have rammed it down the public's throat more expeditiously.

And, of course, he continues to think the only problem was that he didn't explain it well enough, which of course means that the problem here is a failure of understanding on the part of the public. True, he's saying he didn't do a good enough job of explaining it, but ultimately, an explanation is only necessary when someone doesn't understand.

So that mistake boils down to "I'm sorry the public isn't smart enough to understand the first seventy-nine explanations I've given, and I'm sorry that I am not imaginative enough to dream up a new way to say the same thing that they can finally comprehend."

There are his mistakes: That you're stupid and he didn't work assiduously enough to cut you out of vital decisions about your own fate.

posted by Ace at 12:26 PM

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