It was a rainy evening in Amsterdam. . .

Yes, Amsterdam. That's where I spent the day today, having arrived around 5am EST from Minneapolis. I took a three hour nap, grabbed a bite to eat and tuned in the Health Care Summit on my computer. Normally, I would have been out and about seeing the sights, but, today, the weather did not cooperate.

I really tried to be objective watching this, but it became the Obama show. And it failed miserably on several counts. First of all, it failed for Obama. After over 6 hours of watching him pontificate on health care, I realized this whole thing had a Hugo Chavez/Fidel Castro lean to it. Obama had no inclination towards listening to the Republicans and more importantly, the American people. When Republicans spoke, he argued with them while losing the fact check contest several times. What little Presidential "presence" he had before was lost during this summit. As President, he should have been neutral and taken the role of interested observer. Instead, he was an opinionated facilitator who lost the respect of his fellow participants and anyone who was watching this fiasco.

Secondly, the Democratic leadership failed. If you have any doubt, watch the videos of Pelosi's, Biden's, and Reid's remarks. Rambling, disjointed, and nonsensical come to mind as descriptive adjectives.

Finally, and most important, the American people were made aware of the failure of the Democratic controlled Congress. Republican Representative Cantor's "prop" of bringing the 2,400 page Senate bill to the summit and placing it on his desk illustrated the insanity of the dem's approach to health care. The President of the United States thought it was a Republican political "prop" and repudiated Cantnor for bringing a copy of the current Senate bill, which Obama supports, to the meeting. I believe the reason Cantnor's "prop" irritated the President so much was because it was such an excellent visual in support of the Republican's case for a smaller federal government.

I doubt the media will cover this fiasco as completely as it should. The Democrats were revealed for what they are - socialists. That's a good thing. This could have been Obama's "Waterloo".