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Has Obama ever persuaded people to support his policies?

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As the President prepares to make another pitch for his health care overhaul as the American people turn against his statist approach, Jim Geraghty wonders if Obama has ever persuaded Americans to change their minds and support his liberal policies:

There’s a rather glaring problem with public expressions that “this is the moment for Obama to change people’s minds.” Other than persuading people to vote for him, has Obama ever done this? Ever? Can anyone point to a circumstance where he encountered a group that wanted X, and he persuaded them to embrace “not X”?

Indeed.

His strength has never been his power to persuade but rather to inspire.  It always struck me how many of his most zealous supporters could never identify the particular changes Obama would institute once elected (save to replace George W. Bush and be different from him).  They were just impressed by the Democrat as a man, the sound of his voice and the figure he cut.

So, my sense is that while Obama may get a momentary bounce (in the polls) from tonight’s speech, the numbers will not hold and we will not see a significant increase in support for a radical overhaul of our healthcare system.

Comments

  2. The latest brilliant article by Camille Paglia, true a leftist and Obama voter, but man she skewers Democrats and Obamateleprompter. Read it and smile!
    She does slam Republicans in a short paragraph too, criticism most of us would agree with as well.
    Camille is very worried about the Dems in the 2012 election, already!
    Again read it slowly and smile. The liberal Democrat trolls in here can now start to criticise their own as the more free thinking liberals start to break away from the trance and the goose stepping.
    http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/09/09/healthcare/index.html

  4. OK, I admit it: when Paglia gets rolling, she can turn a phrase:

    Throughout this fractious summer, I was dismayed not just at the self-defeating silence of Democrats at the gaping holes or evasions in the healthcare bills but also at the fogginess or insipidity of articles and Op-Eds about the controversy emanating from liberal mainstream media and Web sources. By a proportion of something like 10-to-1, negative articles by conservatives were vastly more detailed, specific and practical about the proposals than were supportive articles by Democrats, which often made gestures rather than arguments and brimmed with emotion and sneers.