Over on the home page, I’ve written a review of President Obama’s health care town hall in Annandale, and offered an open question of what, precisely, those events are supposed to do . . .

. . . besides remind us of some easily forgotten history: “Fifteen years ago this month, Hillary Rodham Clinton launched a nationwide bus tour to promote her and her husband’s ultimately doomed proposal for an overhaul of U.S. health care . . . Hillary’s tour ran into trouble at the outset. At the second stop — in Seattle — half of the crowd of 4,500 had been urged to attend by a local radio-talk-show host, and they vocally opposed her plan. The New York Times reported that she “struggled to be heard above the cacophony of shouts, boos, and whistles.” In Portland, Ore., a plane appeared above the event with the banner, “Beware the Phony Express.” Nigel Hamilton wrote in his biography of Bill Clinton that “when the caravan reached the first highway, there was a broken-down bus swathed in red tape and bearing a forbidding notice: ‘This Is Clinton Health Care.’”