Beacon Street Journal

A teleprompter-free President Obama said some rather strange things during his recent health care Town Hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The most notable was the assertion that “If you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems.”

Indeed. A recent GAO report paints a rather dismal picture. As Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard notes:

The USPS is likely to have a $7 billion net loss this year. The report further noted that without cutting expenses drastically, the USPS may “run out of cash to pay its expenses.” The postal service, the largest civilian federal agency with 633,000 career employees, recently asked Congress for flexibility on funding requirements. Without the changes, the postal service won’t be able to make $5.4 billion in retiree health benefit payments.

This is hardly a model of efficiency upon which to sell the nation on the virtues of a government run health care enterprise.

On health care reform, Obama has evolved into an exemplar of Orwellian Doublespeak. The Congressional Budget Office has already exploded Obama’s patently absurd statements that his proposal will be “deficit neutral” as well as lower costs. Yet, he rambles on. The latest misstatement of fact was the false assertion that the AARP has endorsed his health care reform plan. The White House was forced to acknowledge the following day, that Obama has “misspoke” on this score.

One of the reasons that the Town Halls have been such raucous events for Democratic Senators and Congressmen is that voters recognize unvarnished BS when they hear it, and when Obama’s congressional minions continue to mouth such nonsense, those in attendance, rightfully, become rather indignant. Perhaps this explains why when Maryland Senator Ben Cardin, during a recent Town Hall meeting, claimed that the Obama Administration was starting to restore trust in the health care system, the crowd spontaneously erupted.

Thus Democrats now find themselves in the perilous position of having the leader of their party, who should be the most prominent advocate for his signature domestic initiative, now viewed increasingly by the public, as its least credible spokesman.