Last Saturday night when the Senate Dems hustled up the 60 votes needed to prevent a filibuster on health care reform, my hope-a-meter shot up like the stock market, then dropped soberly back down the next morning. What with the Republicans reeling from disclosures about abortion coverage in the RNC’s health insurance plan, the drug companies getting caught with their hands in the price-hike jar, and Sarah Palin on tour, it should have been a primo week for the good guys. But while the GOPs have been firing repeated volleys into their fat and clumsy feet, our long-awaited, progressive Democratic Administration has been implanting multiple stab wounds in its own back (and yes, it takes a team of contortionists to get the job done right).

I’ll skip the part about the Army, the CIA, and the FBI failing to red-flag the Fort Hood terrorist-in-our midst — the seeds for that latest deadly Keystone Kops misadventure were arguably planted by the Bush Administration. But President Obama owns health care, the stimulus package, and the H1N1 pandemic and he needs to ask his first-teamers some tough questions.

Whose bonehead idea was it to put up a website to grab credit for jobs created by the stimulus package, when any third-tier researcher in the Bureau of Labor Statistic could have told us it couldn’t be done?

With our health care stuff finally up to bat, couldn’t we have delayed the mammogram report of the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force? Did any of us actually read it beforehand? Did any of us who are women actually read it beforehand?

While we’re on health care, how come we announced we’d be fully stocked with H1N1 vaccine in October, and then changed it to November, and then to January? Couldn’t we have borrowed some eggs from the Canadians, or even the Chinese?

And are we reading the polls? Don’t we have somebody reading the polls? Are we under any illusion that my numbers, OUR numbers are likely to warm the hearts of Ben, Blanche, Mary, Joe and Olympia over the next few weeks?

These and more questions need to be asked, because through ineptitude and incompetency, if not intention, the Obama Administration is fortifying the wall of distrust erected by the right between citizens and our government over the last half century. Sure, the Bushies built it higher by failing the test of Katrina, lying us into two unjustifiable wars, and forcing moms and dads to send Kevlar vests to troops instead of cookies, but we’re adding the concertina wire to top of the wall ourselves.

In our country today, consumer confidence and voter distrust of government are linked in a death spiral. If we don’t pull them up soon, we won’t have a shot at turning around the economy, jump-starting job creation, passing family-friendly immigration overhaul, or labor law reform, much less guaranteeing affordable, accessible health care to everyone who calls our nation home. Not a prayer.