YOU HAVE TO AT LEAST KNOW WHEN TO STOP DIGGING:

Obama's Insecure Slip: What led the president to wade into L’Affaire Gates? He thought he’d blown it with America on health care. (Tina Brown, 7/27/09, Daily Beast)

Obama’s unaccustomed carelessness in jumping on a racial landmine at the end of his health care press conference illustrates two things. First, his vanity as a performer. And second, his insecurity about his health care arguments.

The president, after a wordy, wonky, depressingly unconvincing briefing—one that he is pro enough to sense failed to make the sale to the press—eagerly took the question from Chicago reporter Lynn Sweet about the Henry Louis Gates affair. Obama saw it as a chance to be funny, to be real, to be his charming self—and to win back the room.

If there's one big lesson that two years in the public limelight has taught about the UR it is that he can never be allowed to go off script or the political consequences are dire.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 27, 2009 7:17 AM