"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."