The health care reform messenger

Only a certified center-right anti-communist could go to Beijing in 1972 to seek rapprochement with a repressive communist government that had killed multi-millions of Chinese.

Richard Nixon, a staunch anti-communist, was the right guy. The world was shocked. Richard Nixon? The rest is history. (He might have second thoughts if he were alive today.)

We do need health care reform, but only a politician with right of center credentials and strong leadership skills could make an easier job of this - and not divide the country in the process. President Barack Obama may be billed as a center-left president, but his inner circle - those warm to his heart - are clearly far to the left, if not socialist. He had the most liberal voting record in the Senate. To add to his difficulty - his primary skill is oratorical, not leadership.

Nixon became popular when he took on Alger Hiss, a State Department official and a convicted Soviet spy. Obama became popular with a majority of American voters when he took on George Bush in his campaign against John McCain. It worked.

The challenge for Obama now is to convince a majority of us that ObamaCare is not a big government power grab. In my view, the majority of Americans sense that ObamaCare is a precursor to a bigger and more bankrupt government. He has been skillfully concealing this by attacking segments of the health care industry.

It is said that even socialist governments need some vestiges of private enterprise in their landscape, if for no other reason than to have somebody to blame. (And to pay taxes.)

By excoriating insurance companies, Obama has painted a bull's eye on a target every red-blooded American loves to hate. Countless numbers of novels and movies have depicted insurance companies as heartless villains. It is working. He is at his best when he is in campaign mode, and not governing - and that's exactly what he is doing now. He is desperate and on the attack.

To be fair, U.S. News and World Report reported that the "profit margin for health insurance companies was a modest 3.4 percent ... ," (according to highly reliable Morningstar, whose principal owner is an Obama Chicagoan who contributed more than $30,000 to the Democratic National Committee in 2009.) "That ranks 87th out of 215 industries and slightly above the median of 2.2 percent." In comparison Google scored a lofty 20.6 percent profit margin and Microsoft, 24.9 percent. (Nevertheless, some of its CEOs are just like many on Wall Street. Greedy.)

Obama's signature goal isn't simply government-regulated health care. It is big government. Think about some of his commitments: Cap and trade with its staggering tax liability for average Americans; or enlisting young people as Obama federal "public sector leaders" - a "national civilian security force." (Security? What's wrong with the National Guard?). Or how about federal direct student loans that will make the Department of Education the fourth largest bank in the U.S., and with unknown long-term consequences, such as the government dictating career selection and loan forgiveness - say for a student selecting public service as a community organizer.

The list goes on. Recall Obama's campaign pledge to "fundamentally transform America." That is exactly what he is doing, and many Americans are now getting nervous.

The president's political philosophy is understandable given his background. His dysfunctional Kenyan father abandoned him at an early age. His mother was a far-left Democrat; his grandparents attended a left-leaning Unitarian church. He spent his childhood in Indonesia in a Muslim environment living with a nonpious Muslim step-father, followed by his high school years in Honolulu, hardly a hotbed of right-wing conservatism.

So while John McCain - whose father and grandfather were admirals - was predictably a man of the right; Obama is understandably a man of the left.

Not to compare Obama to Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Juan Peron or Huey Long - but rather to describe similarities in their electorates and those times. All four had been elected politicians who were celebrated for their charismatic oratory and were seen by voters as "transformative" leaders, as is Obama, and who would navigate their troubled people out of economic crisis to economic prosperity. Recall Rahm Emanuel's (Obama's Chief of Staff) remark, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."

No less a leader than President Franklin Roosevelt complimented Mussolini, referring to him as "boldly ... interventionist," and "that admirable Italian gentleman." Hitler committed to follow the law of the Weimar Republic until he legally gained power. (Hitler's party became legal by vote of the Reichstag.) He swore to protect the German Constitution and then used the very institutions of the Weimar Republic to destroy it. Our president also swore to protect the very Constitution, which he says is an "imperfect document" with some "deep flaws."

While there is no legal right to health care, we surely have a moral obligation to try to sort out this mess that we call the health care industry to make it affordable. Obama is just the wrong guy to bring us the message. He and his far left inner circle of advisers along with his left-wing acolytes in Congress are scary reformers.

C. C. Colton, English essayist of the early 19th century, observed in "Many Things in Few Words": "Attempts at reform, when they fail, strengthen despotism, as he that struggles tightens those cords he does not succeed in breaking."