"Yes We Can," "Maybe We Shouldn't"

Is Barack Obama trying to hide some innate shyness? After being on 60 Minutes almost as often as Andy Rooney and rivaling Oprah on weekday TV, the President will go for overexposure records with five Sunday talk shows tomorrow to be followed by Letterman Monday night.

The All Obama All the Time blitz is meant to explain and sell health care reform to confused Americans, but it calls up that ancient resistance to argument, "Don't bother me with facts, I've made up my mind."

Can one more rational explanation, or a dozen, undo the visceral resistance stirred up by lies and half-truths about government control crafted from thousands of pages about taxing, mandates, rationing, deficits et al?

Can any rewording of "If you like your current insurance, you can keep it" calm rampant fears about bureaucrats deciding who gets what treatment?

Can any appeal to American decency to care for "the least of these" erase suspicions that coverage for millions of uninsured will deprive current premium payers of medical attention they have been buying for years?

In the eight months of his presidency, Barack Obama has been piloting the ship of state through perilous waters, repeatedly being forced to unload billions on stimulus bills, bank bailouts and carmaker rescues to keep predators from swamping us all.

So far, his exertions have kept most Americans on board, as worried as they may be, and there are some early signs of success, but the swelling wave of ideological opposition to his health care legislation--whatever it finally turns out to be--is threatening his presidency.

The President has made his case over and over again. This weekend he risks jumping the shark with too many installments of a show that has run its course.

It seems past time for the White House to stop trying to persuade the unpersuadable and concentrate on working behind the Congressional scenes to salvage some semblance of true reform and, in Paul Krugman's words, "make some hard choices about the degree of disappointment they’re willing to live with."

Race Cards: OJ, Obama and Ifill

OJ Simpson is going to prison and Barack Obama seems to be headed for the White House after a brief to-do this week about Gwen Ifill's role as moderator for the VP debate because of her upcoming book about the arc of black politics from the civil rights struggles of the 1960s to the present.

Unlike Sarah Palin, who has been invisible on the Sunday morning talk shows, Ifill will be on Meet the Press tomorrow morning with Tom Brokaw, who is old enough to remember the times she is writing about.

Simpson's conviction on charges of kidnapping and armed robbery adds an exclamation point to a milestone between then and now, coming exactly 13 years to the day after Johnnie Cochran played what he called "the race card" to persuade a mostly African-American jury to acquit the former football star/actor of killing his white wife and a young white man.

In the past half century, racism has morphed from an open wound in the body politic into the mostly unspoken X factor in this year's election. With Obama now holding a solid lead in the polls, the haunting question is how many Americans who would never admit it openly will vote against him because of his race.

Time has caught up the criminality of Simpson in another century, but how much will Barack Obama be punished next month for the offense of being African-American?

Another Sunday Without Sarah

Tomorrow morning's political talk shows will offer interviews with a wide range of Republicans, including such women as Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona, Sen. Kay Baily-Hutchison of Texas, McCain advisors Carleton Fiorina and Nancy Pftotenhauer as well as former Massachusetts Acting Gov. Jane Swift.

Those interested in the politics of Alaska will hear from
Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell and former Democratic Gov. Tony Knowles, who lost the 2006 election to someone who will be unavailable to discuss politics before facing a Fox News grilling on Tuesday by Sean Hannity.

With less than two months to go before Election Day, voters may be reminded of the dramaturgy of such classic thrillers as "Laura" and "The Third Man," in which the lead character fails to appear until halfway through the movie, only after the others actors have been endlessly babbling away about her/him without revealing anything significant.

Hide-and-Seek Sarah Palin

Three of four candidates on the presidential tickets will be on the Sunday morning talk shows tomorrow, but guess who's missing?

Sarah Palin, the self-proclaimed pit bull, is out on the trail bashing both Barack Obama and Joe Biden, but her handlers have apparently decided she is not ready for prime time, except in situations where the nosy media can't ask questions.

They brought her out today at an airport rally for thousands in Colorado Springs, waving American flags and chanting “Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin." She told them that Joe Biden "can claim many chairmanships across many, many years in Washington, and certainly many friends in the Washington establishment. But even those admirers would not be able to call him an agent of change."

Perhaps the change that Republicans are planning to offer voters this year is a vice-presidential candidate who will lip-synch her way through the campaign with scripted sound bites but seldom make herself available for reporters' questions about her history or positions on issues.

It might be a relief from Dick Cheney, who has always had too many opinions, but is the alternative a performer in a ventriloquist's act?

Hillary's Horselaugh

As she widens her lead in the Democratic horse race for the ’08 nomination, Hillary Clinton is provoking pundits to great lengths to find fodder for their work.

In today’s Washington Post, media critic Howard Kurtz analyzes all the analyses of the Senator’s laugh-a-thon on the Sunday morning talk shows the weekend before last.

The findings, as they always do, range from deeply psychological (“a defensive laugh”) to socially significant (“there’s sexism is the giggle critique”) to politically calculating (“a shrewd political skill disarming her critics with the gleam in her eye and a roar straight from the belly").

After she made a joke in Iowa about knowing how to deal with “bad and evil men,” Mrs. Clinton scoffed at the media reaction, “You guys keep telling me, lighten up, be fun. Now I get a little funny, and I'm being psychoanalyzed.”

She has a point. There may be a simple explanation for the laughter explosion. The Senator was doing all five Sunday AM interviews from the barn near her Chappaqua home.

Did it occur to anyone that Hillary’s hawhawing may have been the result of her husband on the other side of the cameras making funny faces to mock her solemn demeanor?