Where is the 'I feel your pain' moment???

President Obama has recently been called our 'economist-in-chief' (by Ezra Klein) and our 'professor-in-chief' (by Paul Krugman). When one of our biggest health-care policy wonks and a professor of economics describe you in such terms you know you have a problem.

President Obama can describe the problem and analyze the different options and forces influencing the process, but can he make you feel the moral imperative of health-care reform? He should be able to, theoretically. His mother died of cancer while trying to negotiate her way into coverage.

I know that feeling. The same thing happened to my mother. It can be too hard to talk about. It's a matter of compartmentalization. It's how we survive with great loss. Don't know if that means much. It's not gonna help pass health-care reform, not unless he can use his experience to make us feel that moral imperative.