Below The Beltway

Yesterday it was Hillary Clinton repeating a line that Rahm Emanuel had used months ago, today, President Obama also picked up on the theme that the current crisis is a time of “opportunity”:

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama on Saturday challenged his country to see its hard times as a chance to “discover great opportunity in the midst of great crisis.”

“That is what we can do and must do today. And I am absolutely confident that is what we will do,” Obama said in his weekly radio and video address, taped a day earlier at the White House.

(…)

“Yes, this is a moment of challenge for our country,” Obama said. “But we’ve experienced great trials before. And with every test, each generation has found the capacity to not only endure, but to prosper – to discover great opportunity in the midst of great crisis.”

And he made it clear where he saw this so-called opportunity:

Obama has set a goal of signing a bill this year that would fix the U.S. health care system, which is the costliest in the world and leaves an estimated 48 million people uninsured, plus many others lacking adequate coverage.

“Our ideas and opinions about how to achieve this reform will vary, but our goal must be the same: quality, affordable health care for every American that no longer overwhelms the budgets of families, businesses and our government,” Obama said.

The question, Mr. President, is just what opportunities you’re talking about, and whether the plans you propose are really intended to set the country right again or to remake it according to your own ideological preferences.

Here’s the address in full, you decide: