Delay in Health Care Bill is not "Obama's Waterloo"

Seems odd for Congressional Republicans to take on President Obama instead of the Democratic Congress over healthcare. The President made good use of Jim DeMint's imprudent statement that healthcare could be Obama's Waterloo. From President Obama's Twitter feed, July 21:

Health care reform opponents scale up attacks, playing politics w/ our lives & livelihood. Fight back

Listen to the audio at the link.

Ann Althouse (who voted for Obama because she had more confidence in him than in McCain concerning the economy) comments, "The Democrats have dumped a drastic, complicated health care bill on us and they are ramming it through before we can even figure it out. That's what matters, not the fact that the party out of power is squawking about it."

Wretchard presents another analogy. Probably closer to reality than the "Waterloo" analogy, though still not perfect:

I think DeMint’s analogy is wrong and Obama nearer the mark when he expressed a fear of “delay and defeat”.  Health care is not Obama’s Waterloo. Waterloo was Napoleon’s last gasp.  Obama is still moving forward, albeit much more slowly than just a few months ago. 2009 is not yet Obama’s 1815. A better analogy is 1812: the year of Napoleon’s arrival in Moscow, when his army seized the capital he long desired only to find he could not loot it of enough to sustain his men.

If Obama’s victories — the stimulus, bailouts, cap and trade and now health care — are from another point of view, a kind of looting, then he may have arrived at the point where there is nothing more to loot. Like Napoleon, the capital is his, but it lies in ashes, unable even to sustain his victories. If DeMint is looking for an analogy, it is that twilight moment when Napoleon looked out over the burning city, given over to frenzy and first realized he had thrust his hand into a monkey trap. It is doubtful that Obama, like Napoleon, will be defeated by his bumbling opponents. They are too inept. What crushed the Grande Armee was the vanity of its commander. At first his men did not drop the silks, silver, jewels and fine fabrics willingly. Yet as Grande Armee trod its dolorous road back to Western Europe the wayside became littered by discarded heaps of treasure that but a few weeks before they would have killed for.

Read the whole thing. Watch the video at the last link.

Just as Europe was stunned by Napoleon's conquering army, many Americans have been stunned by this administration's "Shock and Awe Statism". Consider that "It took Obama six months to pick a dog, but he wants a Health Care Bill by next week?" The frenzied rush to push this health care bill through is Beyond Parody. And we've seen some of the results of similar fierce urgency to pass a bill. Not hopeful.

The Administration and Democratic Congress have now met considerable push-back. The President's approval ratings are way down. But they are gearing up for a new fight after the August recess. Napoleon wasn't finished after Moscow. And the decision not to push any longer for signing before the August recess is probably just a tactical retreat.

A little music for contemplation: Bonaparte's Retreat with Bass Fiddle and Dobro standing in for bagpipes. Wretchard's post has some interesting history concerning Napoleon's Moscow campaign.