By "quotient" actually implies DIVIDED by 10...or 1/10th as intellectually disciplined. Clearly from what you wrote you really would agree with this assessment, I beleive. But I see discipline not as a rating of intellectual strength but more of willfulness, which I do believe Obama is definitely the more disciplined of the two...I don't know if he is such by a FACTOR of ten, but certainly more so compared to Clinton. Both Clinton and Gore were dilettantes and deeply narcissistic in each their own way to my way of thinking (Gore so on his fetish with technology & the climate). And Bush 43 had neither intellect nor will (and certainly was no narcissist, which is what I think was his real appeal...an "average" guy). I see Obama as at a minimum a more focused individual (since at least Bush 41) who truly understands the role of the presidency better than anyone since Bush 41. Whether he is successful still remains to be seen; all the pre-judgmental (and prejudicial I might add) assessment of him is just all game-playing by all the parties' involved in the Beltway/national drama. History and events plus the success or failure of his legislative efforts will ultimately tell the story.

Q: Rahm, there are many people out there who suspect or say that what you all are trying to do with the public insurance plan is to eventually drive out the private insurance business, so they will no longer be able to compete, thereby achieving the goal of a government-run healthcare plan. Two questions. One, what do you say to the accusation about motive. And two, what do you say to the substantive question about, how do you design a public plan that isn't laden with government subsidies in such a way that it does, in fact, cause the private insurance companies to fundamentally exit the system or cause their costs to be so high that the employers reject those plans. [rest of question inaudible]

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How much worse can this get?
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First there is this gem:
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there are many people out there who suspect or say
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That it's common practice for political reporters to speak of "many people" without referring to individual opponents or their arguments is the immediate red flag of ineptitude.
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Who are "many people"? Are they reasonable people with honest motives, or are they crazy people speaking on behalf of an agenda that conflicts with everybody else's?
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What if "many people" is true in the physical sense, i.e. there are ten thousand of them, but when considered relative to the population as a whole become a tiny minority, i.e. ten thousand people out of three hundred million?
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The term "many people" seems to be shorthand for something else, probably similar to what is meant by the term "everybody" in the phrase "everybody knows". That something else sure sounds like "many people who oppose you politically with whom I've been in contact", doesn't it? Why is that not explicitly stated?
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Also, it seems that there is a justification of the argument inherent in the question. If "many people" say something, is it not more likely to be true, seems to imply the questioner. Of course that's idiotic.
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Whether "many people" make an argument or not doesn't necessarily justify its inclusion in a serious discussion, a fact that should be evident to educated people (presumably those who are tasked professionally with questioning the President's ministers about policy). "Many people" apparently "suspect or say" that Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States, and therefore is illegitimately serving as President. According to the questioner, that makes these concerns legitimate and reasonable, at least in terms of justifying the restatement of "many people"'s talking points nearly verbatim on their behalf.
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This "many people suspect or say" technique is at best fallacious, and at worst dishonest. It should not be accepted as good professional conduct.
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suspect or say that what you all are trying to do with the public insurance plan is to eventually drive out the private insurance business, so they will no longer be able to compete, thereby achieving the goal of a government-run healthcare plan
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My guess would be that those people who suspect that the Obama Administration's goal is to crush private enterprise leaving the state's health care bureaucracy to reign supreme also suspect that Democrats are closet Trotskyists ideologically opposed to the existence of private industry.
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Another guess would be that those suspicious people haven't been paying attention to how desperate the Obama Administration have been (as evidenced by their policies) to keep the control of the structure of the financial sector in (incompetent) private hands.
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All of this conjecture speaks to the necessity of knowing to which suspicious people the questioner is referring, so as to ascertain what prompts them to speculate that the goal of Obama's health care reform is not to help ordinary people out, but instead to "drive out the private insurance business" --as if the Administration held some sort of personal vendetta against health insurers. It also speaks to the dis-ingenuity of the reporter.
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what do you say to the accusation about motive
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Gee, Einstein, what does any reasonable person say to unsubstantiated, anonymous accusations about anything?
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I believe that the short answer would be "Prove it." or "Provide some evidence, and then we'll have that discussion."
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The questioner's implication is that these accusations are warranted and reasonable, supported by significant evidence, and should be taken seriously in a policy discussion. I guess that, since the reporter apparently knows these accusers well, he may find every morsel of wisdom from their mouths to be beyond question, but to people who exist outside of that relationship framework, it looks as if the reporter is bending over backwards to confer credibility on a political attack.
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what do you say to the substantive question about, how do you design a public plan that isn't laden with government subsidies in such a way that it does, in fact, cause the private insurance companies to fundamentally exit the system or cause their costs to be so high that the employers reject those plans.
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So, in other words, how do you make a public plan that isn't better in terms of cost or availability than those offered by the extremely profitable health insurance giants...so that they can continue to do business as if people didn't really have any other, better option to choose?
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The premise here seems to be that, unless enormously profitable insurers are left without this sort of competition to do exactly what they've been doing so far, these corporations will "fundamentally exit the system", i.e. shut their doors tomorrow.
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Doesn't this sound sort of like the banksters' threats, i.e. "We need TALF and TARP on our terms, otherwise we just won't lend money, and the engine of the economy will collapse"?
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Why would a reporter essentially threaten a government official with deliberate catastrophe on behalf of an industry?
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Even more bizarre, why would a reporter take at face value the private insurers' claim that the offering of a cheaper, better plan could "cause their costs to be so high that the employers reject those plans"? Why wouldn't the reporter simply phrase that question "or health insurers aren't willing to provide cheaper rates and better service, so that employers tend to reject those more expensive, less useful private plans?"
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But even more incredibly, how could the health care access system change if its current owners change nothing about the way they operate? What would be better for the majority of Americans with health insurance whose premiums go up exponentially, and whose coverage declines, and whose experiences are more and more that of rescission and retroactive denial, if private insurers did exactly what they're doing now forever?
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How is this reporter serving the interests of public information essential to proper democratic functioning?
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How does repeating an unsubstantiated charge such as "some people say that you just want control of the health care system for its own sake" and then opposing the change people want and need from how insurers operate with an imaginary sudden doomsday scenario in which these colossal private enterprises disappear overnight aid in Americans' understanding of the issue?
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How does this person call themselves a "journalist" with a straight face?
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Perhaps more importantly, how do journalists call this person a journalist, and accept these practices as the work of a peer of integrity?