It's a perennial problem with politicians -- they have one set of rules for the people they govern and another for themselves. This fact was one of the reasons the "contract with America" back in 1994 was so popular. Republicans vowed to no longer exempt Congress from the rules they passed for the rest of the nation.

Wednesday night's ABC News Obama infomercial featured the second time since he was elected president that Obama set himself above those he governs. The first time was when he sent his girls to an elite private school while at the same time nominating as education secretary the man heading Chicago's public schools -- the same public schools that weren't nearly good enough for his own children.

Then Wednesday, in response to a question from a neurologist -- that got no follow-up from the sycophantic ABC News hosts -- Obama did it again, reserving for himself a right that he would deny the vast majority of the American people.

President Obama struggled to explain today whether his health care reform proposals would force normal Americans to make sacrifices that wealthier, more powerful people -- like the president himself -- wouldn't face.

The probing questions came from two skeptical neurologists during ABC News' special on health care reform, "Questions for the President: Prescription for America," anchored from the White House by Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson.

Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist and researcher at the New York University Langone Medical Center, said that elites often propose health care solutions that limit options for the general public, secure in the knowledge that if they or their loves [sic] ones get sick, they will be able to afford the best care available, even if it's not provided by insurance.

Devinsky asked the president pointedly if he would be willing to promise that he wouldn't seek such extraordinary help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan he's proposing limited the tests or treatment they can get.

The president refused to make such a pledge, though he allowed that if "it's my family member, if it's my wife, if it's my children, if it's my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care. "

Maybe it's a good thing for the president's efforts to take over the healthcare system that the town hall got such poor ratings. I think most people would be outraged to find out that the government would diminish their own access to health care while ensuring that neither the political elite nor their loved-ones would be affected by the government-set limits.