Jazz already noted Ed Morrissey’s breathless declaration of a “Dukakis moment” for the President.

Jazz suggests Ed might be going a bit overboard. I’d say: “More than a bit.”

I like Ed. In fact, I respect Ed. He is, in my experience, one of the most reasonable and insightful of today’s rightwing bloggers. But this particular analogy to Dukakis belies Ed’s otherwise levelheaded, usually astute take on the world.

In essence, all Obama said was that — public health care limits or not — he’d use the resources he has to seek the most he could for the health of his wife and daughters.

First of all: Good for him; he’d be a heartless moron if he said anything different.

Second: How is what Obama said any different than what any wealthy person would say and do today, when faced with the limits imposed by an employer-provided or other, private-sector health care plan?

The super-rich have always had — and will always have — the ability to pay their way to outcomes the rest of us can’t even imagine. That doesn’t mean their motives are automatically suspect when they turn around and seek to provide health insurance to millions who today have none.

To be clear: I do not currently favor Obama’s preferred “public option.” Staying true to my admonition yesterday, I will not make line-in the-sand pronouncements against the public option — yet — but I will confess that I am leaning (heavily) toward the “public cooperatives” mode of addressing this matter (as Obama might be).

Recognizing all that, it seems unproductive for anyone (even Ed) to profess shock that — public option or none, the status quo or something new — Obama would do what any compassionate father and husband of considerable wealth would do.