Foolish PG

Your hand-wringing Aug. 23 editorial on the need for health-care reform ("National Headache") and your obvious disappointment in President Barack Obama's weak leadership on reform got me to thinking: Did you really expect things to be different?

It's clear the PG hasn't given up on our president, but your arguments are incoherent. For example, Republicans are hauled out of political purgatory to blame for Mr. Obama's problems. This is thin gruel since Republican numbers in Congress won't permit them to effectively advance or oppose anything. "I won," Mr. Obama famously told Republican leaders early this year. Now, suddenly, Republicans are this powerful antagonist preventing reform?

Could it be that most citizens are on balance satisfied, as polls show, with their current health-care plans? Perhaps people noticed that life expectancy in the United States keeps growing in spite of the "broken" health-care system and they resist massive tinkering that might affect that?

Or perhaps folks just aren't ready to trust a massive and expensive re-engineering of our health-care system to a president with no policy experience, no executive experience and little success in anything other than campaigning. Way back in 2008 when you endorsed that very same candidate, did you really expect things would be different?

DOUGLAS POWELL
Robinson