This doesn't seem close to me

Over at the Economist, David Boaz from CATO is debating an almost defenseless Harvard Professor. Here is Boaz:

In many ways, of course, Obama has just doubled down on George W. Bush's policies of bailouts, takeovers, expanded Fed powers and nationalisations. Some of the opposition to him reflects the public's sense that we've been piling up spending and debt for over a year now, so he is being punished for his predecessor's mistakes. But Bush or Obama, these policies take us in the wrong direction. After a crisis brought on by cheap money and distortionary subsidies, he is doing more of the same. In a recession he is adding debt, taxes and regulation to the burdens already felt by business.

Professor Elaine Kamarack seems to have the problem correct,

The biggest culprit in this lack of focus was, of course, health care. Because universal health care is the last stone in the social safety net edifice created by Franklin Roosevelt, it has been, for decades, an obsession of the Democratic Party's elite. Unfortunately for them, this obsession has never been shared by the public.

but I dont think "more trust" in government is the solution.

Decades of data from the American public show a severe and persistent lack of trust in the federal government. This lack of trust is an especially difficult problem for a Democratic president with an activist and progressive agenda.