Obama Contrite Over Health-Law Problems - In Bid to Improve Standing, President Acknowledges Missteps

From The Wall Street Journal:

In an effort to revive his standing with Americans and suppress a growing rebellion within his own party, President Barack Obama on Thursday displayed a level of self-criticism he has seldom shown publicly in his five years in office as he acknowledged he "fumbled" the rollout of his signature legislative achievement.

Throughout an hourlong news conference at the White House, Mr. Obama showed rare contrition about the political fallout from his self-described missteps—from his failed promise that, under his 2010 health-care law, people who liked their coverage could keep it, to a problem-plagued website that has yielded embarrassingly low enrollment numbers and weeks of intense criticism of a divisive overhaul that has been a political flash point for years.

"We fumbled the rollout on this health-care law," Mr. Obama said. "Am I going to have to do some work to rebuild confidence around some of our initiatives? Yeah."

Mr. Obama's unusual acknowledgment of personal fault comes as a growing number of Americans have lost trust in his leadership and disapprove of the job he is doing as president as well as him personally. He even admitted the media, which he is usually quick to criticize, is legitimately taking him to task over the issue.

Mr. Obama said he wanted Americans who were burned by his promise to know: "I hear you loud and clear."

On the website, he admitted: "I did not have enough awareness of the problems in the website."

And of the simple phrase he uttered repeatedly throughout the fight over the law's passage—"If you like your health-care plan, you can keep it"—he conceded: "The way I put that forward unequivocally ended up not being accurate."

For some of the president's allies, the serving of humble pie should have come sooner. Mr. Obama and his White House team have for weeks been urged to make a full mea culpa.