REACTION TO OBAMA - AT 9:42 P.M. ET:  The president's news conference is over.  That's the good news.  As always, the president spoke beautifully.  We all know that he's an effective campaigner.  If he wasn't, he wouldn't be where he is.  And he did make some perfectly valid points.  Yes, we must cut health-care costs where we can show waste.  Yes, there are inefficiencies and inequities built into the current system.  Yes - and here he was most effective - insurance companies are making record profits at a time when the rest of the country is hurting, and yet keep raising premiums.  Yes, the system can be better.

The problem is, there was no solution.  What we needed from Mr. Obama was what Walter Lippmann called "the picture in our heads."  His job tonight was to give us a clear image of how his health-care plan would work.  Do I choose my doctor?  Can I get a second opinion?  Will my doctor be able to treat me his way, or will he be dictated to by a government agency?  If a claim is denied, what do I do?  How can I avoid the long waits that are characteristic of other systems in other countries?  What the president needed was a simple checklist.  Instead, we got a kind of rambling "yes we can" moment that came down to, "We're in bad shape, we've got to save ourselves, it's got to be done fast.  Trust me."

What we saw tonight is what we feared before November's vote - a man with no executive experience, without any concept of how to lead.  Americans may think the president has a health plan, one, perhaps, that he's thought about over the years.  Instead, he essentially gave over control of this most important measure to his party in Congress.  He kept talking about "what comes out of this" or that committee.  Shouldn't he have something to say about that?

We want to see a better, more modern, more efficient health-care system.  It should not be built around either corporate profits or government bureaucracy.  To get what we need will require detailed information on the nature of our problems, and carefully constructed solutions.  And, sometimes, a patchwork solution is better than an overhaul, as it zeroes in directly on a problem.  The American system of checks and balances is, at base, a patchwork solution and series of compromises.

The president must lead.  In so doing, he must take into account the legitimate objections of his critics.  He's got to do better than he did tonight.  And we always wish him well.

July 22, 2009