You have to wonder. President Barack Obama talked to George Stephanopoulos this morning, in his first interview since the victory of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts. If President Bush, in the wake of a dramatic electoral setback, had done an interview in which he came across in a state of such deluded denial, there would have been calls for him to be removed on the grounds of being mentally unfit for office. (And I don’t mean just from liberals, but also likely from the liberals’ pet conservatives like David Brooks and Peggy Noonan).

President Obama’s sober analysis of why Scott Brown was elected in one of the most liberal states in the nation is here:

Here’s my assessment of not just the vote in Massachusetts, but the mood around the country: the same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office. People are angry and they are frustrated. Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.

Understand? A vote for Republican Scott Brown was more of a vote against Bush, Cheney and Denis Hastert than it was a vote against Obama, Pelosi and Reid. And despite the fact that it was motivated by the very same feelings on the part of the voters that “swept” Obama into office, they ignored his own personal entreaties to vote for Martha Coakley; she being the candidate who ran on a platform of supporting everything that Obama planned to do!

This is a level of self-serving delusion that is very nearly deranged.

He then goes on to be merely disingenuous:

Obama insisted today that the Senate wait for Brown to be seated before they make any changes to its version of the health care reform legislation.

“Here’s one thing I know and I just want to make sure that this is off the table: The Senate certainly shouldn’t try to jam anything through until Scott Brown is seated,” the president said. “People in Massachusetts spoke. He’s got to be part of that process.”

This is merely a pose on his part because he already knows that there is now no possibility of Democrats so blatantly spitting on the will of the people, in the wake of the dramatic result in Massachusetts, with so many of them up for reelection this year (all of the House and one third of the Senate).

Then there is more serious dishonesty and/or delusion on his part:

“I think point number two is that it is very important to look at the substance of this [health insurance reform] package and for the American people to understand that a lot of the fear mongering around this bill isn’t true,” Obama said.

Obama also said it was important for the American people to take a look at the substance and details of the health care reform legislation that Congress is considering.

He simply cannot be serious. Firstly, the subject of health care — being President Obama’s number one legislative priority from the start — has been out there and has been publicly debated for almost a year now. Secondly, the only ones trying to prevent the American people from understanding what’s actually in the bill — “the substance and details” — are the president and the Democratic leadership themselves. After specifically promising during his campaign that all health care negotiations would be televised on C-Span, President Barack Obama has led a process that has ended with secretive, behind-closed-doors meetings consisting of no one except top Democrats, hashing out their attempt at a final bill and making deals of convenience (also known as pay-offs) at will. As the president would say, “let me be clear”: nothing that came before mattered by comparison to these would-be final negotiations, with Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid calling the shots. If they had had their way, the American people would never have seen what was in the final bill until it was taken out of that closed room and rammed through the House and Senate solely upon the votes of one political party.

These excerpts of this interview — conducted on the first anniversary of his inauguration — portray a president badly out of his depth, with a terribly distorted and/or dishonest view of reality, and yet one not ready to give up on an inflated view of himself. In fact, his opinion of himself appears only to be improving, when he can take a clear slap like the one given to him in Massachusetts yesterday and twist it into some kind of vindication.

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