By Dave Andrusko

There are so many things going on that it's not often that I get to see an event live; I usually hear it later on C-SPAN radio or watch it online. Not so with President Obama's interview with 60 Minutes' Steve Kroft which aired yesterday. That one I cleared the decks to see.

If we were not a single-issue organization, there would be a hundred different points of obfuscation that would warrant cleaning up. But there was still plenty for pro-lifers who watched the President on Sunday.

Kroft alternated fairly tough questions with "here-can-I-help-you?" excuse-lines that the President would appropriate for himself. Here are some highlights.

Obama's all-purpose excuse was that he was in such a hurry that sometimes things got done in a way that violated some of his promises--such as to "make sure that the key negotiations around health care were on C-SPAN" (which he admitted to)--and freezing out Republicans (which he did not fess up to). In fact it was clear that in Obama's mind the trouble derived not from doing everything behind closed doors free of Republicans, but that they did not agree with what the leadership came out of their closed caucuses and presented as "take it or leave it" to the GOP.

He went out of his way to deny that he was a "traditional, big government liberal." Globbling up the brunt of the health care system (a sixth of the entire economy) was only "because we were in such a rush to get this stuff done."

There was a clear suggestion that he didn't see the repudiation coming. (In fact, Obama several times avoided admitting the election was a referendum on him and his agenda.) He did acknowledge that he knew that ObamaCare might hurt (although perhaps not how much), but that he took it on the chin for the good of the nation.

"So, ultimately, I had to make a decision: do I put all that aside, because it's gonna be bad politics?" Obama said. "Or do I go ahead and try to do it because it will ultimately benefit the country? I made the decision to go ahead and do it.

And it proved as costly politically as we expected. Probably actually a little more costly than we expected, politically."

Costly not, you understand, because ObamaCare is deeply flawed--loaded down with abortion-enhancing provisions and guarantees that we will result in the rationing of medically necessary care-- but "partly" because "I couldn't get the kind of cooperation from Republicans that I had hoped for."

One other illustration. Although the decision had nothing to do with our concerns, Obama's explanation for why he did it speaks volumes.

"Well, I decided to sign the bill. Now, that's an example of where I was so concerned about getting things done that, you know, I lost track of part of the reason I got elected. Which was we were gonna change how business was done here. And, you know, each one of those decisions may be justifiable in isolation, but cumulatively I think what people started feeling was, 'Gosh, this is sort of business-as-usual in Washington.' And that's part of what I ran against."

Obama wants the benefits of portraying himself as an outsider, a kind of Jefferson Smith, who came to clean up Washington but who was temporarily sidetracked by the complications and complexity of governing. And don't forget:

That Democrats fell like ten pins November 2 had nothing to do with Obama or ObamaCare.

If you believe that, you'll believe anything.

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