Video: President Obama's Montana town hall on health care is another disappointment

President Obama's town halls lack the drama.  AP Photo Ron Edmonds

Suppose you turned on your television set expecting to see Jerry Springer and instead got Oprah.  Or imagine that you changed channels expecting to see a fight on MTV's Real World and instead got an educational program on the History Chanel. Given such circumstances you would probably leave a more educated person but you would also feel a great sense of disappointment from the lack of entertainment.  Such is my disappointment with President Obama's town halls.

The media has been hyping both town halls as an opportunity for the reform opponents to vent their frustrations with the President.  We were sold a town hall where the President would be confronted withe same kind of passion and incivility that Congressional members have been facing.  In reality, we got Oprah.  The town halls were informative and a great example of the civic process.  They were also boring and a perfect prescription for an afternoon nap.

Conservatives I ask you, Where are your frustrated patriots, your free-market capitalists, your huddled mobs yearning to be free of socialist health care?  Can no one find one fed up person to be unruly toward the President.  In the state of Montana, as Jewel would put it, where have all the crazy conservative cowboys gone?  Perhaps the President should schedule a debate with Glenn Beck.  Surely Beck would provide the fireworks we all desire.

In all seriousness I am glad people showed restraint and civility in the Presidential town halls.  The craziness should be left for Jerry Springer and not political town halls.  My disappointment springs only from my selfish desire for more entertainment.  Still, Fox News will sell the town halls as fake simply because no one went off on the President.  So while the town hall was informative conservatives are still left believing the President has never really been challenged on his reform plans.