Now It's Showtime

Barack Obama, superior speechmaker, is reaching for the favorite arrow in his quiver Wednesday night.

But will it bounce harmlessly off its intended target, a public increasingly wary of health-care reform?

When I first heard that the president would take his case to a joint session of Congress, I thought: huh? He held a prime-time news conference and several town halls and the health-care ship took on more water in August. He needed to be talking to those 535 lawmakers behind closed doors, not in front of the cameras -- or so it seemed to me.

But Obama's entire career is built upon his way with words. It was the keynote at the 2004 convention in Boston that launched him, a mere state senator, as a White House possibility. It was his barnstorming addresses in Iowa and other early states that drove home the audacity of hope against the more reserved Hillary. His race speech in Philadelphia enabled him to survive the storm over Jeremiah Wright. His Greek-column oration in Denver set him on a victory path for November.

But somewhere between then and now, Obama's passion seems to have cooled. He describes health-care reform as a series of logical arguments that appeal more to the head than to the hearts of those who are worried about losing what they have, fear higher costs or don't see what's in this for them.

Let's say Obama gives a great speech on the Hill, and the gridlock doesn't break. Then what? He will have played his strongest card. Bill Clinton gave a terrific speech to Congress on health care in 1993 and couldn't even get a bill out of committee.

The overlapping proposals have made this thing into a vat of Jell-O, but more important, reforming the system, in which so many special interests have so much money at stake, is a phenomenally hard task. It is impossible to make everyone happy. It is impossible to add all these people to the system and hold down costs and make sure nobody bears any pain.

The media are in their make-or-break mode. Brian Williams said last night that the speech could be the start of Obama's last stand on health care. And maybe he's right.

Whatever specifics the president lays out tonight, the question, in the end, is what he and the Democrats are willing to settle for -- how much it will take for them to pass the thing and declare victory. Obama may change some minds tonight, but the challenge comes down to math: assembling a coalition, probably with few if any Republicans, that will swallow a cobbled-together compromise.

Roger Simon declares in Politico that "nobody likes a tease":

"Each desk in the West Wing of the White House should have the same sign on it as the staff helps the president prepare for his health care speech on Wednesday: KISS.

"Keep It Specific, Stupid.