John Kass is a local columnist for the Chicago Tribune has been covering the city since 1983. When a small time local politician named Barack Obama decided to run for the US Senate, Kass tried to warn voters of what kind of man they were falling in love with.

He tried to warn us again when the inexperienced, out of his depth politician ran for president. His warnings fell on deaf ears. And since Obama's election, Kass has continued to illuminate what he sees are Obama's massive failings. He coined the term "The Chicago Way" - a mixture of thuggishness and cronyism - to describe the governing style of Obama.

You just knew that Kass would have something special to say about the Obamacare rollout:

Somewhere deep in the mind of President Barack Obama, way back where it's safe and warm, the man must be seeking refuge in memories of happier days.

Days when he could easily wield magical powers like the political messiah he once was, feeding the multitudes with his rhetoric, bringing Hopium-smoking journalists to tingles and tears.

All the man had to do was hold out his hands to stop the oceans. He said so.

"I am absolutely certain that generations from now," he said the night he won the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2008, "we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

He who could heal the planet and stop the oceans must be a man who could control one-sixth of the American economy and impose Obamacare on us whether we wanted it or not.

But it didn't turn out that way, did it?

Hubris has a way of ruining grand designs. And like reality, it bites.

So last week the Obama presidency began crumbling. Some may be disappointed, and may see him in heroic terms, withering like a character in an ancient tragedy.

A few of us saw a backbencher from the Illinois state legislature, a guy who took orders, then rode to the White House on a personality cult, finally exposed.

Obamacare, his health care plan rammed down America's throat without a bipartisan consensus, not only became a political embarrassment, it became a political disaster.

The Obamacare website continued to implode, Americans lost their health insurance even though he repeatedly promised them they wouldn't. Period.

The word "liar" was suddenly attached to his name, because of the cynical, untruthful promise he repeatedly made, and once Obamacare began collapsing, his fellow Democrats began to run in panic.

Kass captures the essence of Obama with these comments on the president's press conference:

Watching him blame others for the failure of his signature policy - saying, "I was not informed directly" - was depressing.

He'd promised us, repeatedly, famously, stridently, that under Obamacare, we could keep our health plans and our doctors. "Period," he said.

He guaranteed it. He gave his word. It was as if he asked us to read his lips.

What he said wasn't true. And Americans know it, and they don't like it.

And the columnist nails it by characterizing the lie:

But this lie from Obama is different. It's not about death and destruction overseas, or infidelity among the elite.

This one is close to home. If all politics is local, there's nothing more local than your own body.

What could be more personal than our own bodies, or those of our spouses and our children? And that makes it all the worse for the president.

If we had only listened.