The Battle for America 2008 feels familiar—but not because it's about last year's election. Authors Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson report a lot of new behind-the-scenes details, so the story feels fresh. What feels familiar are the problems Sen. Obama faced on the campaign trail, which mirror the ones President Obama faces today in selling health care reform.
Now that Barack Obama is president, it's easy to forget how tough it was for him at times during the presidential campaign, particularly during the primaries. It wasn't just that he was often behind in the polls. It's that he sometimes just wasn't very good. He stumbled in debates. He made distracting gaffes. Frequently professorial, he failed to connect with voters. These are the same criticisms we hear today.
Obama talked to the authors about the messy process of finding his voice. "I'm actually sort of a slow starter," he said. "In those first couple of months I wasn't operating on this tight script. [I was] still sort of working out my riff."
On health care, it's clear that Obama is still working out his riff. He's been talking about the subject for months and yet the number of people who disapprove of his handling of the issue continues to rise. In several polls, people now disapprove of his performance more than they approve. He has pushed the idea that health care reform will not increase the deficit—to the exclusion of other arguments he might make—and yet the message is not getting through. In a recent Quinnipiac University poll, voters did not believe, by a margin of 72 percent to 21 percent, that Obama will keep his promise to overhaul the health care system without adding to the deficit. - Slate.com Story
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