WASHINGTON — Stepping before cameras in the White House late last night, President Obama thanked Democrats in Congress for making the ultimate sacrifice.
The president noted that to better the lives of Americans, they laid their own political lives on the line. They rose, Obama said, “above the weight of our politics.”
In other words, many of them cast a vote in direct contravention to the will of the people who sent them to Washington.
Obama praised the lawmakers for their “courage and conviction.”
In other words, their politically suicidal tendencies.
With certainty, some of those Democrats forced to vote for Obama’s deeply unpopular government health-care overhaul will go down in defeat in the November elections.
And just as certainly, Obama will tout the passage of his legislation to rally his own supporters who have grown tired of his empty promises of change.
What passed last night was but a dim shadow of the massive new entitlement program he had promised, but it was a major victory still.
In recent weeks, Obama has feverishly tried to recapture the magic of his presidential campaign by comparing his efforts to those of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
He has compared his widely disliked health-care legislation to Roosevelt’s Social Security Act, which was highly popular and passed Congress by wide majorities from both parties.
And he has donned a stovepipe hat and imagined himself as Lincoln saving the Union.
As absurd as Obama’s audacity is, his visions of autobiographical grandeur are not without reason here, inside the Beltway.
When he looks up and down his flank at his fellow warriors, he sees Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. In this land of midgets, Obama is a titan.
He had little trouble suckering the midgets into sacrificing themselves for his presidency.
Pretty slick politics, but hardly the sort of feat that makes it into the pages of the biographies of Lincoln or Roosevelt.