A bipartisan health-care consensus will remain elusive after yesterday's marathon summit, as expected, though viewers who stuck out the full seven-plus hours could be forgiven for wondering what happened to all the liberals. General anesthesia? To listen to President Obama and his closest Democratic allies, you'd think John McCain had won the election and their bill had been drafted by Paul Ryan, Tom Coburn and the scholars at the American Enterprise Institute.

In his opening statement, Mr. Obama said the key issue is "figuring out how can we control the huge expansion of entitlements," especially "the exploding costs of Medicare." He said Congress must fix "some fundamental structural problems" in U.S. health care, with reforms that lower spending by increasing "choice and competition."

If only politics hadn't intruded—"politics I think ended up trumping practical common sense," he claimed—peace would reign upon the Earth and the two parties could "focus on where we agree because there actually is some significant agreement on a host of issues."