“This isn’t about me,” President Barack Obama famously announced as support for his massive government takeover of health care began to falter.

Oh, but it is.

It is about him because it is his vision that has given us a so-called stimulus of staggering size and dubious value. It is his instincts that guide him to sacrifice the American economy on the altar of climatological junk science. It was his wish to run General Motors.

As with other issues, the cost to taxpayers is an annoying side issue that he and his administration simply do not want to be bothered with. Their attitude is a wave-off: How can you pester us with those trifles when we’re trying to do something titanic here?

And “titanic” is a fitting adjective, since much of what makes the American health care system the envy of the world is about to be dashed against the jagged iceberg of socialized medicine.

There is something darkly comical about these people seeking to comfort us by telling us we may keep our current health plan and our current doctors if we wish. Pardon me if I do not ooze gratitude when government chooses in its mighty benevolence to let me keep something that is a basic right.

And speaking of rights, health care is not one. It is a responsibility. It is something we should secure for ourselves, through our employers or through the open market.

That open market is about to be steamrolled by the same Obama tank brigade that flattened free-market solutions to the banking and housing problems of the last year.

As the first hot summer of the Obama era sees shoulders finally turning cold to this bum-rush of government seizures of more and more of our economy and our lives, the administration has to wonder: Are they onto us?

One can only hope.

The M.O. of this White House, on display for issues from the stimulus to climate change to health care: First, assert phony urgency; then insist that only their solutions have merit and mischaracterize opponents as seeking to “do nothing.”

It worked for the stimulus, and trillions of dollars later, some people are wondering if we’ve been had.

We have. And here they come again.

This White House’s usual logic for hastily jamming things down the public’s throat is to deny voters time to realize what is being done to them. But the health care urgency card is being played with particular ferocity, with absurd original calls for votes in both houses within mere weeks, before the August congressional recess.

They know that if members of Congress return home with the issue still pending, voters will drown them in righteous objections to a plan that brings more deserved opposition by the day.

Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina has suggested that a health care plan born of one-party rule will fail, and with it will topple this season of madness in which a silver-tongued leader with glib PR soldiers has had its way with an inattentive nation.

“It will be his Waterloo,” DeMint suggested, giving Obama the chance to divert attention from his plan’s flagging support by accusing Republicans of “playing politics.”

As if he isn’t.

Of course it’s about politics, to the extent that the political arena is where policy matters get settled. President Obama and his party have a plan to hijack one-seventh of the national economy; the Republican Party is trying to muster the spine and strength to pry government’s grubby hands from a health care system that most Americans like.

Debates are about ideas, but Barack Obama is the face and voice of this looming health care nightmare. Yes, this is about him, and it will continue to be about him as long as he continues his assault on free markets and individual liberty.

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