I have watched a good number of presidential speeches to Joint Members of Congress in my lifetime. The one President Obama gave shocked me to the core. How do you sell a bipartisan bill on health care reform by smearing the other party. From the one trillion dollar deficit he inherited, to accusing town hall citizens, Republicans, insurance companies, to labeling everyone who doesn’t agree with him about documented parts of the House Health Care bill as liars, to nailing Sarah Palin. How does that help sell his plan.
If we can get the savings from fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, do it. Don’t promise it and let all of us who know you can’t meet that promise listen to that knowing full well you can’t deliver.
How do you add hundreds of thousands of people with pre-existing conditions and not raise costs?
If you want to throw the other party a bone on tort reform, throw the bone. Don’t promise a little test program in some remote part of the country.
If it’s going to cost $1.2 trillion don’t tell us it will cost $900 billion.
If you are going to add either 45 million to the health care rolls, don’t tell us the present system can handle the inflow. For the first time you took out the 9 million illegals and told us they were never in. Guess for the first time there are only 36 million uninsured.
If you want to make a speech, do it in 20 minutes. We don’t like to hear you speak as much as you like to hear yourself.
If you are going to have a government plan(public option) to compete with private insurers, don’t call it something else. An exchange, for example.
Don’t add $900 billion and say it doesn’t add to the deficit.
Don’t tell us all the doctors and nurses are for your plan when I don’t know a one who is in favor of it. Plus, say the AMA only represents 18% of the US doctors.
Don’t tell us lie after lie and then call everyone who challenged your plan liars.
Don’t pander to your far left and criticize the other 80% who don’t have your ideological beliefs , then say it’s wrong to use ideological perspective to disagree with your plan.
Don’t tell us to win one for the Gipper(Ted Kennedy).
Your speech was not aimed at the public. It was not aimed at the Republicans. It was aimed at the blue dog democrats. You told them in no uncertain terms they would get with it, or in your words, “be called out”. Pass it without a single Republican vote. Do it with 51 votes in the Senate. You haven’t met witih the Republicans on health care since April. Still, you tell the nation you are open to other ideas.
Last speech you insulted the doctors by saying they would do operations that weren’t needed for the money. This speech you insulted the insurance companies.
You came off as an angry man. Angry because the majority of the people in this country don’t want your health care reform. Health care reform, yes, yours, no.
From my experience as a marketer, you don’t sell much with anger. You don’t get support from the opposition by insulting them. You don’t make points by criticizing your competition.
The truth is not what you say it is. Winning at any cost is not good leadership. You get just so many lies and you become branded a liar. One Republican Congressman even yelled out, “you lie”. He was referrring to the illegal alien issue. You branded a lot of people with that, but more and more are beginning to count your misrepresentations. This speech may have tipped the scales. Not for you, but against you.
Charles Krauthammer in a sydicated column this week had a headline: “Does he Lie?” He confirmed that all four committee passed bills in Congress allow illegal immigrangts to take part in the Health Insurance Exchange. You said no, they would not get insurance. This weekend you told ABC during your big telethon that you had no idea that ACORN gets Federal funding. Today’s Wall Street Journal had an editorial confirming it’s only $8 billion slated for ACORN. You were an attorney for ACORN, your campaign gave ACORN $800 thousand to get out the vote for you.
Perhaps Americans are so accustomed to politicians lying, we are immune to the concept. But, the more you lie, the harder it will be to sell your ideas to the public. Health Care Reform may be your first lesson on that.
