As the administration struggles to get its message out (and clear) on health care, it's just countering the lies rather than telling the bigger truth: What scares the opposition most about health care reform is that it will work. 
From the right's perspective the bitter legacy of the New Deal is not really the (relatively small) redistribution of wealth or the tax dollars they give up for their own protection.  The real issue is that for two generations after the enactment of Social Security, the Democratic Party absolutely owned blue collar voters. It's the prospect of another 40 years of solid-majority Democratic Congresses that engenders the lie-scare-bluff-yell-mock tactics of the Republican Party.  Their own policies, of course, have never proven successful or popular enough to keep them in power.
Barack Obama and the Democrats should be saying this all the time.  Forget trying to counter the lies.  Just repeat time and again that the opposition is so fierce because they're afraid the plan will work, and if it does, no one will elect them anymore. Taking that tack will remind people that the plan is, in fact, likely to work a lot better than the current system; that the opposition is playing politics, not talking policy; and that their desperation is not caused by legitimate concerns about the program but by fear for their own backsides.  
Every rant then becomes a fearful whine. And Americans--even "real" Americans--don't like whiners.
 

The correlation between the extraordinary voter turnout and the Democratic victory should wake people up to the true political nature of the United States. For years, polls have shown that the population's opinion on issues, particularly social issues, was much more liberal than election results were indicating.  The reason: declining voter turnout.  If this election shows anything, it's  that, the more voters who go to the polls, the more center-left the results.

If John McCain can't look Barack Obama in the eye, what's going to happen in diplomatic situations where spoken language is a barrier and body language is critical?