You gotta give Barack Obama this: the man gives a good speech.

Rightly or wrongly, his address tonight before a rare joint session of Congress was billed as a sort of make or break moment for his presidency.

Maybe it was; probably it wasn’t.

More to the point, he did a reasonably decent job in trying to explain his proposed health care reforms (for the first time, actually spelling each element of the plan out) while, at the same time, talking directly to the elderly to calm their fears that were stoked by a campaign of lies orchestrated by the insurance industry and its allies among the right wing GOP who would like nothing better than to see health care reform buried for another four, or eight or even eighteen more years.

Taking the guess work out of whether he would or would not stick with his so-called public option, Obama couldn’t be clearer: “…an additional step we can take to keep insurance companies honest is by making a not-for-profit public option available in the insurance exchange.”  But, the president was quick to add that ” it would only be an option for those who don’t have insurance.”

All in all, a very good speech. But whether it will really change the tone in Washington is not at all certain. Not yet. 

In one of the more amazing moments of what is usually a highly scripted political event, a North Carolina Republican Congressman actually shouted at the President, “you lie!” when Obama told the assembled body that his health care reform proposals would simply not cover illegal immigrants, as some Republicans and right wingers are claiming.

This small, but unusual outburst may signal that the acrimony the President asked the Congress to end, may just be getting into a higher gear?

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