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

By Mat Probasco, Newser Staff

Posted Aug 21, 2009 6:45 AM CDT

(Newser) – 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."

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Roberta Crawford, 87, wears a sticker on her head showing her support for a single payer health care system during a forum at the South County Civic Center yesterday in Delray Beach, Florida. (Getty Images)

President Obama speaks during a town hall meeting on healthcare at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee yesterday. (Getty Images)

President Barack Obama listens to a question during the Organizing for America National Health Care Forum at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington yesterday. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

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It shouldn't become a wallow, but there's nothing wrong with self-reflection and trying to learn from everything we did that was wrong, and right. It wouldn't be so bad to see a president echo this. - Peggy Noonan

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

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