Kristin Jones is a 48-year-old municipal art activist, whatever that is. She told the New Yorker magazine a couple of months ago that, “ ‘No’ is an inspiration.”

Assuming her epigram holds true, then President Obama heard enough “nos” last Thursday to last through all of his first term and, perhaps, through his second, if that’s how the cookie crumbles.

A few of the “no” sentiments uttered by the Republican representatives in attendance at the President’s invitation to discuss U.S. health-care—by the tone of their voices—actually were saying “Not only ‘no,’ but hell no!” They spoke of the high quality of our current plan and you’d believe they got their “program” from Rush Limbaugh as he stepped out of the Honolulu hospital and proclaimed, “There is not a thing wrong with our health care…not a single thing!”

From the outset, it was plain to see that the Republicans came to sing, not to dance with Democrats. They only had one song, “Start over again with a clean sheet of paper.” Over and over they repeated this simple message. If they have any ideas,—new or old—they didn’t tell us about them.

The Queen and I spent most of that day, glued to the tube. It was a sight to see and hear. Wonder of wonders, many Democrats lined up to congratulate our own Republican junior Senator Tom Coburn for his participation. Truly, Coburn was about the only Republican to even attempt to participate. He cited the need to address fraud, which c\ould account for as much as 7 1/2 percent of current cost, he said.

Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell, at the ending of the program, announced that Mr. Obama had used 119 minutes of the day-long program to speak his mind. That shows where McConnell’s mind was all day. Later, I learned the Democrats used 52 minutes and the Republican senators used 24. How many different ways can you say “NO?”

Three or four of the Republicans brought along their unexpurgated editions of the current Senate Health Care bill. Variously described by the senators, the voluminous text consists of 1,875 or 2,100 or 2,450 pages.

About the only real bit of political theater I saw was when Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), in not-too-kindly terms, reminded Mr. Obama of all his “broken campaign promises.” The President reminded McCain “The campaign is over, John.” McCain, as old as he is, was laying a semblance of a foundation for another run to keep his Senate seat. Or, worse yet, to replace Mr. Obama in 2012, when he will be 76 years old.

While the health care discussion dominated the news, another bit of political rascality took place on Capitol Hill. Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky) played the Sidney Daingerfield card and put a one-man “hold” on a jobs bill which expired last weekend. His action was immediate cause to withhold monthly checks for one million unemployed American bread winners. Bunning, I guess, was in a snit over the fact that the popular bill did not deduct the cash from another government program.

A side bar to this was our Sen. Jim Inhofe, head Republican senator guru on U.S. highways. It happened that money for continuance of Oklahoma’s highway funding was included in the jobs bill. Zingo! A shutdown in Oklahoma and Inhofe’s ox was gored.

Inhofe, speaking to the Tulsa World’s Jim Myers, said, “Oklahomans are going to pay a huge price once again because of politics as usual in Washington.” He forgot to mention that it was a Republican senator who threw the sprag under our wheels.

None the less, our paladin promised to pull out all stops, saying “I’m going to call in all my chits.”

Two things pop out in retrospect: 1) The Republican senators can’t figure out how the United States could offer its citizens total health care, like the other 100 leading industrialized nations of the world, and, 2) They have lost their good old American “can do” philosophy, and, 3) They don’t care about Joe Sixpack and his family nearly so much as they do the horror of a possible deficit.