Into the lion’s den

Give Barack Obama credit.

Just two days after delivering a State of the Union address in which he lamented the failure of Republicans and Democrats to work together, the president showed up in enemy territory, at a House GOP retreat in Baltimore on Friday, to press the issue.

The result, televised live, was informative and instructive -- although unlikely to change many minds.

Mr. Obama delivered a short speech before taking some questions from a skeptical audience. His body language connoted a wide range of emotions, including defensiveness, annoyance, confidence and resignation. This wasn't a typical, stacked, town hall dog-and-pony show.

The president stood his ground on many issues, taking Republicans to task for their criticism of his health care proposals. Listening to the GOP, he said, "you'd think this kind of thing was some sort of Bolshevik plot." One Republican House member quickly responded that the president had characterized opponents of his plan as agents of the status quo, when, in fact, the GOP had offered a number of free-market proposals to make the U.S. health care apparatus better and more efficient.

On taxes, the president trotted out his claim that 95 percent of all Americans had received a tax cut under his watch -- ignoring the fact that he also championed higher federal cigarette taxes, which negate the administration's modest change in the income tax withholding tables for many middle- and low-income Americans.

But when asked to support tax cuts for all Americans -- including those whose investments and entrepreneurship produce many U.S. jobs -- the president demurred, saying billionaires don't need tax cuts.

Mr. Obama found some common ground with his audience on the idea of a domestic spending freeze. He also seemed open to a new GOP line-item veto proposal that would give him more power to control congressional pork. Good.

In the end, his was a worthwhile exercise that offered the American people a chance to identify fundamental differences between Mr. Obama and his Republican detractors and thus to reach their own conclusions about the best road forward.

For that reason alone, let's hope it's not an isolated event.