There are two reasons we cannot yet trust President Obama on health care:

(1) He has yet to identify what his plan is. He talks beautifully about what he hopes to do, but has yet to put his plan on the table. Without identifying his plan, he asks us to trust him. It appears that his stated objectives (no tax increase on the middle class, no increase in the deficit, no reduction in benefits, no health care rationing, you can keep your current plan, etc.) are mutually exclusive. If he really can do all he says he can do, he needs to tell us how. In detail, with specifics.

(2) Our Federal Government has a long, sorry track record of mismanagement, fraud, waste, and unintended consequences in almost everything they do. Federal bureacracies have a history of dealing imperiously with the citizens they are supposed to serve. Our Congress has a decades-long habit of passing laws which contain hidden provisions that act against our best interests and which we only learn about when it too late. Our elected leaders cannot be trusted, even to read the bills they enact, let alone make sure the laws are good ones. And whatever they pass into law on health care will never, never go away, no matter how bad it turns out to be. The people who are going to the town meetings may be unruly and loud, but they are also right to speak up now while they can.

The President needs to agree to stop trying to sell us a pig in a poke and the protesters need to quit shouting and listen to what is being proposed. He needs to quit trying to thrill us with his rhetoric and begin trying to educate us on whatever his plan really is, explaining how each provision he wants to enact will solve the problems he says he wants to solve, and explaining what each provision will mean to us...to our taxes, our current health plan, our relationship with our doctors, our access to services, our care at the end of our lives, our freedom to choose for ourselves, etc. Then he needs to address the legitimate concerns of the protesters, not with soaring, perfectly metered rhetoric but with facts. He needs to explain how this Federal program will avoid all the poor management found throughout the rest of the Government. Finally, he must have a genuine willingness to modify his proposals to address concerns and reconcile the incompatibilities. In short, he needs to educate and work with the citizens he represents. No more airy assurances and vague generalities.