Your government does not represent you. (gasp)

By MICHAEL GOODWIN - New York Post

Truth delayed is truth denied. Or at least truth was denied until yesterday, when the fig leaf of "health- care reform" was shredded. Finally exposed was the Holy Grail of the ruthless quest.

It was so our Narcissist-In-Chief could claim another notch on history's belt.

Don't think for a second the whole last year was about reducing the deficit or bending the cost curve. Nor was it ever really about helping Americans who need better medical care. A handful of those poor souls were there again yesterday, human props for his show.

As he smugly read the roster of predecessors who tried and failed, from T.R. to Bill and Hillary, there was no pretense of modesty. This was about him.

The imperial trappings of coronation -- of all things, a rock-star introduction of the president at a signing ceremony! The giddy celebration of self and party, the hailing of bureaucrats and congressional hacks as heroes and more odes to the Kennedy clan were as welcome as fingernails on a blackboard.

Yet it was also predictable. A presidency dedicated to the pursuit of glory is a presidency squandered on ceremony.

"You're the reason we're here," Vice President Joe Biden said obsequiously to his boss. Never has a phrase been more pregnant with double meaning.

Yes, Obama is the reason the Democrats were celebrating -- and the reason not a single Republican was with them. Not all Democrats were there, for at least opponents were bipartisan.

Obama is also the reason more than half the country could feel uninvited to the party in the people's house. They made clear every chance they had -- from elections to polls to demonstrations -- that they were voting no.

For their trouble, they were ignored and often demonized. Their government does not represent them.

It represents itself and its advocate acolytes. The party-in-a-hot house is what the Dems have become under Obama.

Their disconnect from the people who pay for their imperial courts is now complete. They acted like children at a birthday party, oblivious to the pain in a nation where perhaps 15 million are out of work.

Obama's the reason they are unbothered. He has reduced the jobless to a statistical annoyance.

A president is elected to lead, and Obama is leading America into a dead end. He could have gone for honest reform by agreeing to important changes that enjoy broad public support.

The chief aim should have been to arrest rising costs. The savings could have been used to expand coverage and ensure health care and the economy were on a stable course.

Instead, he opted for a misguided takeover of 17 percent of the nation's product on the backs of a rented slice of Congress. The new entitlement will create a gusher of red ink and there is a very good chance the world's finest health system will be diminished by longer waits, shoddy care and higher costs.

This is Obamaism. It is sold with claims so false they are odious.

Glib lies repeated daily are means to the end in which the state assumes more power, more money, more control. When he says "we," he means "we the party, we the government."

Sunday night, after the House acted, he crowed that "this is what change looks like."

Indeed it does, at least the change he brings. Washington is now a one-party town, determined to work its will on a nation increasingly united against it.

It is not the change Americans want.

If we are smart and brave, the good change, the change that will rescue the nation, comes in November. Oh, hurry.