I’m sure I’ve said the same thing fifteen times before, in various ways.

A nice and mostly balanced interpretation of what the voting in Massachusetts means for Obama over at the New York Times. However, it reinforces in my mind how difficult it is to be a consistent politician in this country because of the contradictory positions held by most Americans.

Here’s what I mean: The problem with most Americans is that they want politicians to achieve two contradictory goals at the same time. I laugh at this attitude every time gasoline goes about $3 a gallon. The television station will interview people at the pump who are normally opposed to big government but now want the government to do something to lower gas prices. And when that’s not easily accomplished, they fall back on some simplistic conspiracy theories: “It’s expensive because of the additives the government forces them to add” or “If only they would allow drilling everywhere in America we would get nickel gas for the next thousand years.”

So it is with health care. Americans want lower health care bills and steadier insurance coverage, yet they get upset when the government tries to tell insurance companies what to do, tries to control costs by using science to measure the effectiveness of a treatment, or attempts to require everyone to maintain coverage to prevent expensive emergency room primary care. It’s an impossible task. It leads to weird contradictions like Republicans fighting to support excessive Medicare spending (a program they fundamentally oppose), or older people being against socialized medicine yet sneaking into Canada to purchase discount pharmaceuticals whose prices have been lowered due to government involvement.

Thus the failure of health care will be due to the Democrats’ inability to speak clearly and honestly, the Republicans’ pandering to base human fear, and the average Americans’ unwillingness to realize that he or she can’t have everything and that difficult choices have to be made. That’s the problem with politics. It targets the myth that we shouldn’t have to make difficult choices.

The final clear example: “Obama needs to work on jobs and housing!” The problem is that the same people argue against deficits and large government programs. So the government is tasked with fixing a problem yet asked not to intrude in any major way. What options are left? Tax cuts?

Blah. It’s like arguing with a student who says that knowing how to read and write won’t help her because she wants to be a nurse. This is my “I’m glad I’m a teacher and not Obama” post for January.