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Obama Frees His Mojo
Mark Wilson / Getty Images
The president took all the political noise—the hysterical pre-performance commentary, the shouting GOP congressman—and used it to reduce the assembled Republicans to foolish members of his rowdy class.
Xtra Insight: Read more Daily Beast takes on Obama's health-care speech.
With one mighty bound, he was free. Well, at least his mojo was. Obama has figured out the best method to prepare the way for his verbal Houdini acts: Use political noise as the tune-up din before the aria. Perhaps his body temperature is so low it sometimes takes him too long to break out the song.
He was helped by the hysterical pitch of all the pre-performance commentary. It had become received wisdom among the pundits over the last week that Americans needed him to show us how to lead. That he had to make it clear who was in charge. That he had to remind us why we voted for him. By the time he made his way to the presidential podium, we were all in suspense about how this new leaderly macho would express itself. I half-expected him to barnstorm out in riding boots and harangue us, Mussolini-style, underlit from a plinth.
I half-expected him to barnstorm out in riding boots and harangue us, Mussolini-style, underlit from a plinth.
Fortunately, it was the Democratic members of Congress who were excessive. They gave Obama an extended ovation appropriate to Winston Churchill on V-E Day—except the Brits are more restrained. Hillary Clinton was so eager to demonstrate there is no daylight between herself and the president that she almost swooned in his arms when he stopped to embrace her. Seated with Jill Biden and Ted Kennedy’s sorrowful widow, Victoria, Michelle looked regal and moody, as if she still missed the beach.
When Obama dispenses with that dread sobriquet “professorial,” he does it by being, well, more professorial. This time he gave us not the wonky professor but the academic star who has had enough with the antics of his rowdy class. “The time for bickering is past! The time for games is OVER!”
It was a boon that, true to form, Republican Congressman Joe Wilson scored an own goal by yelling, “You lie!” when Obama had said—truthfully—that illegal immigrants would not be covered (as distinct from legal but non-citizen immigrants).
Obama’s great asset has always been an ability to maintain his air of authority without being baritone about it. He can be boring, but he is never ridiculous or pompous. When he called timeout on the bickering and the games, the Republicans sitting sullenly on their hands were reduced on TV to foolish members of the class who had been throwing ink bombs all summer at the math teacher. They looked all the more surly after Obama had wrung a double thumbs-up from John McCain for adopting a McCain campaign measure—offering Americans who can’t get insurance because of pre-existing conditions low-cost coverage to protect them against financial ruin if they get seriously ill.
No, he wasn’t convincing about the cost of all this, and he lost me when he got into that damn insurance exchange, but he had an ace up his sleeve with Ted Kennedy’s posthumous letter. His riff about what the dying senator had called the “character of our country” was inspired, reminiscent of his original career-making “not a liberal America and a conservative America” hit at the 2004 Democratic convention. There was something about the writerly way Obama relished the phrase “the character of our country” that made it his own, not Ted’s, and conjured up an America that was flinty but big-hearted, self-sufficient but also neighborly. It communicated, at the eleventh hour, the missing soul in the partisan debate.
Perhaps Obama is often slow to nail controversies because he needs time to live inside them for a while in his head. It’s unnerving for the rest of us, but even the haters, one feels, are made to think more deeply than they’d like before they return to the bickering and the games.
Xtra Insight: Read more Daily Beast takes on Obama's health-care speech.
Tina Brown is the founder and editor in chief of The Daily Beast. She is the author of the 2007 New York Times bestseller The Diana Chronicles. Brown is the former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Talk magazines and host of CNBC's Topic A with Tina Brown.
For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.
How Rich People Smoke Pot
Paul Schrodt is a writer living in New York City. He has contributed to New York magazine, Radar, and Esquire.com.
Justice Clinton?
As vice chairman of Public Strategies and president of Maverick Media, Mark McKinnon has helped meet strategic challenges for candidates, corporations and causes, including George W. Bush, John McCain, Governor Ann Richards, Charlie Wilson, Lance Armstrong, and Bono. McKinnon is co-chair of Arts & Labs, a collaboration between technology and creative communities that have embraced today's rich Internet environment to deliver innovative and creative digital products to consumers.
Andrew Young's Revenge
Tina Brown is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast. She is the author of the 2007 New York Times best seller The Diana Chronicles. Brown is the former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Talk magazines and host of CNBC's Topic A with Tina Brown.
Introducing Beast Books
Tina Brown is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast. She is the author of the 2007 New York Times best seller The Diana Chronicles. Brown is the former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Talk magazines and host of CNBC's Topic A with Tina Brown.
Politicians Gone Crazy
Tina Brown is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast. She is the author of the 2007 New York Times best seller The Diana Chronicles. Brown is the former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Talk magazines and host of CNBC's Topic A with Tina Brown.
magicman
Real nice writing....from a female perspective.
I found myself giggling over your description of the First Lady's Box. I was in half anticipation of a comment on the ladies fashion...instead we got 'the beach'. A freudian usage no doubt, leaving us the quandry as to which one she meant? These are the dangers of reading too deeply into things. For some it sparks the imagination, for others mischief.
Yet again, if you have never been to Martha's Vineyard, you must go. It stimulates the 'reverie' to a life lasting proportion, enough to fill up the eyes during a Presidential Speech, in reminder of better days.
timeisnow
Tina
, You must be kidding, I dont believe a word he said ,and never will. Obama and you both must be in the same party Left Wing Radical Progressives... You are both out of touch with reality and I guess you will just have to wait until Novermer to hit that wall of denial...LOL
RicoSuave
Not bad, Tina, not bad at all.
-E
opedanderson
"Hillary Clinton was so eager to demonstrate there is no daylight between herself and the president that she almost swooned in his arms when he stopped to embrace her"
".....Michelle looked regal and moody, as if she still missed the beach."
2 condescending remarks about 2 VERY smart and accomplished women. Yet more evidence of your mysterious disdain for powerful women. I see this in your writing and TV appearances all the time. (Remember on Morning Joe when you thought that Hillary should come home from Africa and hit the gym?)
It must just irk the hell out of you that another powerful woman, Sarah Palin, kicked over the Obamacare apple cart with her comments. (Untrue as they may have been)
Face it, Tina. You have a pronlem.....
atwork
it's so easy to accuse one of racism, sexism, or bigotry, when all you do is pick and choose remarks that are obviously supposed to be comedic and isolate and twist them. i believe ms. brown also referred to all republicans as surly, misbehaving students and obama as a "wonky" professor. please stop punishing people for having a sense of humor and publishing something that is (dread the thought!) enjoyable to read. it is because of people like you that the current political world is one of tip-toeing, PC-phrase garbage where nothing of substance is ever said.
you, i believe, have the problem.
kaleb85
Thank you atwork, my thoughts exactly!
bobj72
Tina Brown....... MASTERFUL as usual. Bravo, Brovo, Bravo...
dkulawik
Dear opedanderson ~
Good points and I basically agree with you. Maureen Dowd is similar in her disdain for powerful women. I think they're just jealous. BUT you missed something. Ms. Brown not only has a problem, but (I believe) she owes a correction and/or a retraction. It's this kind of sloppy work that makes people distrust the medial
Unless there was some huge change in itinerary, Hillary Clinton was in London for an international meeting on Afghanistan and Yemen. Perhaps Ms. Brown was speaking of Nancy Pelosi. At any rate, methinks Ms. Brown kind of destroyed her own credibility. Now I'm wondering who Brown saw who made her think it was Clinton? I've never seen Hillary Clinton "swoon" or "nearly swoon." Finally, Ms. Brown would do well to remember that Clinton came to his aid to ensure that many Democratic women, angered by the clear misogyny of the Democratic party, didn't defect to the McCain camp during the election. She went out and stumped for him. She didn't have to.
CrazyRoger
The Democrats were giggling. Obama had just made a declaration that we own the American people the same quality of health insurance that we in government enjoy. Up rose the Democrats and clapping too. The poor Republicans had no choice but to rise and clap too, at exactly what they don't believe in! It was so funny!
piktor
The word "CHARACTER" has cropped up again.
Mr. Obama used it when outlawing torture and mentioning Churchill, who also used the word at the subject of torture of captured Germans ...it would "poison the character of our nation".
In ending his speech Mr. Obama relates the subject of healthcare to a matter of national character.
It is in America's character to face and solve the matter of healthcare. Nothing less is to be expected.
ThinkAgain
It's also part of our character to find our own path, be a leader, not a follower.
The liberal insistance that THE ONLY possible solution to the healthcare problems is to emulate those in other much much smaller countries that have systems that are mediocre at best is not asking us to excel and lead. It's asking us to quietly put our tail between our legs and follow submissively.
The idea that that anyone with a brain would see that this watered down version of those mediocre systems is the best approach and somehow makes us noble is outrageous. We're being ask to accept mediocricy as something to aspire to. That's change and hope we don't need.
carouzer
ThinkAgain--Please. I think you need to,well, think again. Obama has BEGGED Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats to come up with alternative ideas. And they have--death panels, pulling the plug on Grandma, etc.
He at least put forth ideas for reforming the system--a process that will, should it pass, doubtless require subsequent legislation and modifications. The Republicans' relentless "no we can't" is wearing very thin. They have only recently been able to choke out the words that health care does need reform.
The Republican "response" to the President's speech was more of the same old dreck. After eight years of nonleadership, the American people clearly want someone to provide a vision and a motivation for change. What they get from the Blue Dogs and Republicans is not honest debate on the merits and ideas to make what you term mediocre better, it is stonewalling and analysis paralysis which will probably stymie any reform effort.
The President is trying to lead and his speech last night was inspired. Unfortunately there were so many people sitting in that chamber worry about how to save their poltical asses, rather than considering what is best for the American people, that in all probability, nothing will get done, regardless of how visionary the President is.
jsdc007
Hello?
Did you even listen to the speech? It told liberals in plain terms that a single payer system wasn't even an option, and that even a public option was an unlikely possibility. The proposals were all about market driven options with necessary governmental regulation. America has always been a country where the private sector dominates, but yet the public sector plays an important role. And so should it be with healthcare. And the last time I checked, public universities like U.Va., U of Michigan, etc. were more popular than many private universities in these states. Yet no one talks abotu a wholescale takeover of the educational system.
The President offers a uniquely American, centrist solution to the problems of healthcare in this country, and yet his political opponents continue to babble the same old tripe. If you're opposed to his plan, regroup, and come up with some new talking points. Your old talking points are tired and are irrelevant.
crngndmhm
Yes leading from 37th place in overall health care, while some might be mediocre compared to others they're top of the class compared to us. And yes aspiring to be mediocre isn't bad when your the class clown.
ThinkAgain
lol Same old dreck... that would be the crap you liberals drag out every time you've gotten power over the last 40 years. All those experts and you can come up with anything but what the neighboring country with GNP the size of NYC is doing? And they're changing theirs to be more like ours.... you can't even bother to open your eyes enough to see that!!
The 37th position is more BS. Our position has more to do with our lifestyles than our healthcare system. We're spending a fortune to be able to live like fat slobs with no consequences! It's not working! You really think this is going to change that?
louis4louis
Nice piece Tina, cant stop smiling :)
sophia5
THE CAMPAIGN IS OVER.
Obama is President.
This is no longer about Obama's oratory skills.
All the "mojo" in the world doesn't alter the facts.
"even the haters, one feels, are made to think more deeply than they'd like before they return to the bickering and the games."
"made to think"
They have "thought" it out, the numbers don't add up.
Just ask the Nonpartisan CBO.
"The time for games is OVER!"
This isn't about games,
it's about future generations of tax payers and their
burden of debt.
"reduce the assembled Republicans to foolish members"
So whenever someone has a legitimate opposing view,
they're "fools," even if their disagreement is legitimate,
based on definitive calculations ?
"That he had to remind us why we voted for him."
HE DID REMIND US. We get it already. He's eloquent. AND ?
Can we get past the cult of personality and deal with reality ?
unsuiatlarge
"So whenever someone has a legitimate opposing view,
they're "fools",
Please bring these legitimate arguments to the fore! I agree they exist and need to be debated. I am afraid, though, that the loud and irrational voices are drowning out the legitimate arguments and instead leaving us with the likes of Rep. Wilson calling the President a liar when he is in fact telling the truth. Doesn't say much for the Loyal Opposition or their arguments.
oliverckerr
Dear Tina,
Generally you are more interested in how they looked and spoke, not what they said, but I am compelled to post this essay/ letter on your page because president Obama's people are liable to read it.
My Health Care Solution / An Open Letter to Barack Obama
Dear President Obama,
Here is my Health care solution. My innovative approach deserves your attention.
Health Care For The Rest of Us
Health care, a major element of our economic heartbeat is stressed! My Loose Penny Program, a capital injection, will start to repair our muscle, but mission critical diplomacy is required.
You need to bring our fast foods, supermarkets; Target and Wal-Mart CEO's to the Rose Garden, to ink my proposed deal. You went to Cairo.You can meet with KFC. Our pocket change can make the critical health care diff rinse.
Every chain must participate in our Loose Pennies Program, regardless the size of their enterprise. Our purpose: an additional two-cents in their cash registers. For every item registered we want two pennies extra, tacked as patriotic gratuity.
In this you, President Obama, are Chief Arranger, but this is not a government mandate. A patron can refuse to pay the voluntary two cents. Burger, fries and a drink total six extra cents, pennies off the pavement. Regardless what we purchase at the market; we are only pitching in some loose change out of pocket. 40 items at the supermarket could easily add up to $150. Would 80 cents inhibit anyone's generosity?
A worker chosen by the workers to represent them can meet with the managers to approve the total pennies for everything out the door the week before, dividing that total by everyone's hours worked.
Then we include up to $2 dollars extra for every hour in the worker's paychecks. We will also deduct 5 % for an original idea: the medical mal-practice pool, but employers are exempted from matching that, only participating doctors will contribute $5 per patient visit, so sticker prices won't be raised to cover any additional cost of doing business. Fast food chains and supermarkets won't be harnessed by charges from our two-pennies program!
The worker's pay raise doesn't come out of management's pocket, but work place production will increase. When someone quits, the crew might ask the boss leave them to pick up the slack, so they earn more money!
The overage, beyond $2 dollars hourly extra in every pay, goes to interest bearing medical savings accounts, with the worker's name on his or her portion. You are president. You can ask everyone on the low end of the economic chain to divide their bounty, or you can order the take home half in cash, with the balance going to grow their medical savings accounts.
The medical savings account, as a health care solution beats health insurance! Insurance companies are dedicated to making money, not protecting the sick from financial disaster. When an insurance company cancels your policy because you have an expensive disease, they don't refund your premium. But with a Health Assurance Savings Account, when you quit or get fired from the job, your medical savings account goes with you!
After a year behind the fast food counter, a 40-hour per week worker could have more than two grand in their Health Assurance account. Ten million uninsured people at the bottom of our economic food chain might not have health care insurance but all would carry Health Assurance. In the event they don't feel right they have access to medical care, and a second opinion, because the money to pay is there! When it's your money, wasteful procedures evaporate.
This works for the medical professional. You agree to the fee, the doctor swipes your card and the money is deducted from your Health Assurance account. The insurance company is out of the mix. The doctor can afford the $5 hold back for the cooperative med-malpractice pool.
This proposed over-the-counter voluntary two-cent gratuity, $344 dollars monthly is transferred to the working not so rich by management, without bureaucracy. Government bureaus are out of the mix, except as monitors, responding to anonymous complaints by workers and customers against companies that appear to be cheating their workers.
In all the dry cleaners add a nickel to every shirt pressed, a dime for every dry cleaned piece. In all the family operated dry cleaners, medical savings accounts will replace the worker's share of their family's health insurance.
This 2 cents extra covers 90% of all the minimum and lower wage jobs in USA, juicing our economic recovery by pumping the bottom of our economic chain, enriching the people most likely to purchase goods with their fresh found money! Those in a low echelon hourly job, working 40 hours a week will have $80 extra weekly in his or her pay envelope, the diff rinse between a life scraping by and getting ahead; the advantage of $76 after a 5% set aside for a medical mal-practice pool, or $40 in their pay with minimum $36 earmarked for their Health Assurance savings.
Millions of uninsured not so rich people building Medical Assurance Accounts will directly benefit from this voluntary deal. We, the people gain from tipping our pennies to working folks, as these millions of uninsured won't be crowding emergency clinics for care, which we all pay for.
Emergency health care is infected by the actuarial projections of how many uninsured people might use an emergency room walk-in for care during the course of any year.
Working people in min-wage jobs with Health Assurance accounts cover their access on a need-to-be seen basis. In addition to medical savings accounts, the two cents gratis could save a million mortgages, a contribution to neighborhood health as deserted house disease devalues the whole street.
For the rest of our uncovered citizenry, doctors and dentists must be given the volunteer opportunity to do tax deductible charity work, treating them. A charity patient is defined as anyone without insurance. The plan: doctors do $50,000 in charitable medical services and deduct the 50 grand off the top of their federal tax. Then, after all the deductions, the doctors deduct an additional half off their bottom line; twenty-five thousand or half, whichever is greater.
The hallmark of your campaign for president was "change" beyond a changing of the guard.
Medical professionals could perform $100,000 in charity and deduct $50,000 off their tax and because they only owed $49,000 in taxes, earn themselves a one thousand dollar income tax credit.
My health care approach, conceived outside the D.C. box makes cost effective sense.
Doctors won't be totally at the mercy of insurance companies,' take it or leave it attitudes. People who cannot afford the insurance premiums, with pre-assurance from their family physician, might cancel their outrageous insurance policies.
My plan is a healthy check and balance! Every doctor will have a waiting list of patients waiting to be classified as charity. With more patients in the waiting room, doctors will be ratcheting up their work schedules, their work incentive, freedom of income tax.
Isn't this proposed one-line change in our tax code easier to digest than a thousand page med-reform vaccination, a stick-it-to-us hatched by a scam (stirike that) congress?
Would the insurance company's shills show up at town hall meetings screaming, "It's a communist plot! Down with their two cents extra for medical savings accounts?"
Every doctor and dentist will have a sign on the door: "No insurance? I'm here."
These ideas will enrich our economy from the bottom up, possibly save a million mortgages, and insure access to health care services for many, if not all the millions of uninsured people, whilst leaving the greedy insurance companies out.
Faced with these common sense measures the insurance companies will clean up their acts. Your lobbyist influenced congress, salted with insurance money, won't be so enthusiastic, but your out front leadership will instantly shame them into the right vote.
The long-term solution to our health care prob limb is free medical education for doctors, dentists, and all related personal, our goal one hundred thousand doctors graduated every year until we have one family doctor for every thousand people. A national marijuana tax could fund this program. Politishinz are good at identifying issues, but those who finance their campaigns seem to have an unhealthy hand in governing the solutions.
In that light, the above proposed change in our tax code, encouraging doctors and dentists to treat the uninsured as a deductible charity, could not pass either House of the current congress in a million years without your leadership bringing on a public outcry driving the issue.
I am the unknown poet, your competitor, a long-time candidate for president, roasting in the sun.
Once upon a time our Fourth Estate was independent, standing watch, reporting true. Today's corporate approach to politics locks out the unknowns who seek public office, a primary reason there aren't any candidates. You announce, "I'm a candidate." The editor's don't ask, "What are your ideas?" But, "Show us twenty million dollars." And without access to buckets of ducats, the access to broadcast speech, to present their platforms is also blocked. Blog in the bog, dog.
We need to renew our politics, starting with the reestablishment of our First Amendment Right to televised political speech. Upon this essay, an open letter to you, I am requesting e quill time of our television networks, to give my response to your health care speech to the congress, which the broadcast and cable networks played live. Please don't send the FBI.
http://michaelslevinson.com
kayadams
"When it's your money, wasteful procedures evaporate." this person must not ever get sick --- people DO NOT take time from their lives to undergo tests that prick and prod and probe UNLESS they have to ----- yes a small number are hypochondriacs -- but for every one of those-- they are balanced by the nut case that won't go to the doctor because they're cheap and want to hold on to those few bucks in that health saving's acct or just plain scared of doc thus end up going waaaay too late..... the wasteful procedure issue is on the other end -- from the medical profession NOT the patient --- no offense dude but your theory here is soo off planet earth not even the FBI will sniff around ya.
Artist50
This sounds great but the cost is so low that I think the administration fee would be larger than the money collected.
Johnniemae
I don't agree with all the math or details, but its nice to get an idea instead of a complaint. If we all spend more time problem solving than bitching who knows what good ideas will be unearthed?
MOZART
The Republican Mafia wants this country to start all over again with writing a health care reform bill. Now that is a huge barrel of bat-shit! They would not participate in another effort any more they do in this effort.
Such a bunch of stupid people. Do they think the rest of us are as stupid as they are?? For God's sake... give us a break. They have been yakking for se ven months "about their plans"
What plans? All they have in plans is screaming
NO all the time.
bobj72
The arrogant "R" Jerks actually feel the "D" folks ought to enact a bill the "R" Jerks would devise. How arrogant, how ridiculous!!!
Putorium
As a nurse who for years has wanted to see health care for all in this country listening to Obama who I did not vote for, as a lifetime Republican, becoming more Independent daily, his speech brought me to tears. Finally something was maybe going to be done about a possible health care system for all in this rich country? I no longer can listen to Rush, Hannity who are scaring the public on a daily basis? I have to question as a fairly intelligent woman why is my lifetime party so against trying to help make health care affordable for all in this country. I have seen the greed as a nurse and now I ask what and who are Republicans supporting the individual or the lobbyist? One thing I had not noticed or heard before is that over 34 states only have 4-5 insurance companies that support 75% of the people so no real competition? Why has this even been allowed? I have had to be under pre existing for 18 months and I was under so called Cobra that went from $160 a month to up to $800 a mo before it ended? Scaring of the elderly is so horrible per the talk shows that for years I have listened to and no longer can believe their lies and why are they doing this? What is the answer to our health care system and the high cost , open your minds and find out the real facts and not the scare tactics being used by those who stand to lose big profits.
Redhead5050
Welcome to reality....so glad you figured out what the republicans were and are continuing to do to stop any healthcare reform. Welcome!
PhilMcRoin
the problem with giving a speech to congress is that congress is full of congressmen.. They are not interested in the message, but how the speech was given and what techniques were used to get points across. To learn new tricks of the trade to further their careers or "read between the lines" to determine how spin-proof it is. never mind the content.
MOZART
It will be alright.
The Lunatic Fringe is self destructing as we speak. There will be a decent Republican Party again... but not for a long time
However, the responsible Republicans need to be heard. They need to put a stop to all these foolish and ignorant shenanigans. The Lies and hate.
All Republicans are all now branded with the Devils tattoo and covered with bat-shit. And if the decent Republicans do not take a stand soon, all could be lost for them for fifty years.
PhilMcRoin
the neo-con media and the republican base shoots down its best leaders... it will be a long long time before they return to reality if they continue to shun people like Colin Powell for thinking rationally.
calpoet
Nice take on Obama's speech...interesting that he becomes less professorial as he becomes more professorial. This man certainly knows how to strike the right tone. Check my own take on the speech at
http://www.opednews.com/articles/A-Died-in-the-Wool-Middle-by-Federico-M oramarco-090910-656.html
anghiari
Tina, honey....you wouldn't know a mojo, if it hit you in your entitled libido!
Johnniemae
ha!
Nuld001
Tina, great write-up and as always - spot on!
Caradog
Good piece! Tina on top!
Thank you.
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