Noonan to Obama: Retreat, Call It Your Bay of Pigs

The best way for President Obama to emerge from his health care reform sinkhole is to pull the plug on the whole thing, writes Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal. "It all got hotter, quicker than the White House expected," she writes. Furthermore, "no one understands 'single payer,' 'public option,' 'insurance marketplace exchange'—nobody normal."

Obama could back out, admit his failure, and get a bump in approval ratings like John Kennedy did after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Noonan notes. "When presidents make clear, with modesty and even some chagrin, that they have made a mistake but that they've learned a lesson and won't be making it again, the American people tend to respond with sympathy," she writes. "It is our tradition and our impulse." (More Barack Obama stories.)