I have to admit, though I am often chagrined by the things the president says, I admire how deft — albeit cynical – he is in the art and strategy of communication (at least when he is delivering what are obviously prepared remarks; he gets himself in trouble when he goes off script).

At his latest townhall production, he was just describing his last townhall production, and he talked about it in glowing terms — real democracy in action. He described his audience as comprised of three groups. There were the strong supporters of his “reform,” which he intimates were the clear majority; a smattering of moderate people who had questions; and then there was the third group — obviously the naysayers — which he described (I’m going from memory, but I think this is verbatim) by saying, “Some were downright skeptical that it [i.e., healthcare reform] could happen.”

Of course the polls are showing that an increasing majority of Americans oppose Obamacare. It’s not that they are skeptical about the process. True, they don’t like the process — the way he is trying to ram through, in a manner that flouts the transparency he promised, something so revolutionary. But the real objection is what he is trying to ram through, not that he is trying to ram it through. The uncertainty (it’s actually certainty) is over socialized medicine being a disaster if implemented, not over whether he can get socialized medicine implemented. Yet, Obama doesn’t acknowledge that opposition of that sort even exists. He is trying marginalize the real opposition and feed the press a different story-line for reporting what the debate is about. It won’t work, but it’s clever.

Clever might have worked on less important issues, at least if the president had taken more care to maintain his credibility, which he has badly shot on health care. Obama has never been as popular as advertised – not even as personally popular (his policies have always been far less popular than his person). It is worth remembering, as I’ve noted before, that even with a Republican candidate who inspired little enthusiasm among conservatives, almost 60 million Americans voted against Obama. That’s more than voted for every winning presidential candidate in our history except Bush ‘04. The president has gotten by to this point on the bipartisan goodwill almost every new president gets and a media that has projected him as wildly popular — appearances being crucial in politics. Given that the president is a fierce partisan extremist and that picture of plenary enthusiasm for him was an illusion, that bubble wasn’t likely to last very long, and now it’s been punctured by an issue about which people care deeply. In those straits, a clever communication strategy is not going to solve the problem. It can’t change the substance of what he’s trying to sell.