Barack Obama tried to calm an angry electorate yesterday by explaining his motives for conducting a government takeover of the health-care system, 15% of the American economy and a deeply personal issue for everyone. Unfortunately, Obama’s explanation failed the YouTube test. He told a Portsmouth, New Hampshire audience that he’s never said he supported single-payer health care (via Below the Beltway):

“I have not said that I was a single-payer supporter … I believe it would be too disruptive.”

Really? Maybe someone should clue Obama into the development of YouTube. This particular video has been floating around the Internet since the presidential campaign, from an appearance at the AFL-CIO in 2003, when Obama was running for the Senate:

I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.

Hey, Linda Douglass. I think I found a source of disinformation on ObamaCare. Can you add Barack Obama, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC to your watch list?

Got an Obamateurism of the Day? If you see a foul-up by Barack Obama, e-mail it to me at [email protected] with the quote and the link to the Obamateurism. I’ll post the best Obamateurisms on a daily basis, depending on how many I receive. Include a link to your blog, and I’ll give some link love as well. And unlike Slate, I promise to end the feature when Barack Obama leaves office.

Addendum: Normally I’d put a link to Chris Muir’s Day by Day site here, but today I want to do more than that. Chris has a fundraising drive to keep his excellent cartoon alive.  Be sure to drop a few dollars in his collection to keep one of the Rightosphere’s most talented warriors in the fight!