Poor, misunderstood Barack Obama.
Americans just aren’t aware of all the good things he’s done.
The “system,” you see, is broken.
Believe it or not, that’s what President Obama told George Stephanopoulos in an ABC News interview Wednesday — one year after he took office.
And one day after Massachusetts voters sent a blaring wake-up call — with quite a different message — when they handed liberal lion Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat to no-name Republican Scott Brown.
Apparently, someone needs to set off a foghorn in the Oval Office, because Obama still doesn’t get it:
Americans are nervous — outraged, in fact — about his agenda.
Stephanopoulos, ex-President Bill Clinton’s communications director, actually had to spell it out: “Democrats have to reach out,” he said, paraphrasing Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.). “Slow down the agenda. Because Americans just aren’t buying what the Democrats are selling.”
Stephanopoulos noted that a majority of Americans oppose ObamaCare.
“They want your health-care plan to go away,” he said. “It’s just not popular.”
We’ve been saying that for months.
Yet what was Obama’s response? In effect: I . . . can’t . . . hearrrrrr . . . you . . .
Rather, the president bemoaned “the process in Washington” and the fact that “the system is broken.”
He failed, he said, at “breaking through the noise and speaking directly to the American people.”
(Never mind his 42 press conferences, 158 interviews and 411 speeches — 52 on health care alone.)
Besides, Brown’s victory Tuesday wasn’t a revolt against Obama’s agenda, but against George Bush’s.
“The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office,” Obama said. “People are angry [at] what’s happened over the last eight years.”
No, Mr. President. They’re angry that you chose to push a $1 trillion, job-killing entitlement program in the middle of a deep recession.
That the national debt keeps skyrocketing — threatening to ignite inflation and plunge the dollar.
That your administration doesn’t seem to take national security seriously — as the Christmas Day near-bombing of Flight 253 suggested.
If Massachusetts isn’t a wake-up call, Bayh said, there’s “no hope of waking up.” We’ll keep hoping anyway.