For all the crepe hanging over President Obama's back-seat driving so far on health care insurance reform, he certainly has gotten the attention of the country and of Congress for his speech on the subject at the Capitol tonight.

Seldom if ever has a purely domestic social issue generated such anticipation — and rancor — as this one has, owing in part to Obama's failure to spell out concrete proposals of his own, and to the noisy town-hall meetings this summer protesting real and imagined aspects of the legislation.

Whether by intent or not, the stage is set for a dramatic Obama breakout in the one forum that is most advantageous to any president — addressing Congress directly on national television amid all the trappings of his office.

Tradition as well as Democratic majorities in both houses meeting as one guarantees a standing, cheering entry into the House of Representatives for this new president, the first African-American elected to the country's national leadership.

The question is whether he can rise to the occasion with an upbeat and confident exposition of what he wants in health care reform and why what he specifically proposes is vital to the interests of Americans.

Obama has been criticized for his decision to give Congress the first crack at addressing the subject with only broad indications from him as to what he wants. But at the least he has demonstrated a gesture toward the bipartisanship he promised to seek as a candidate.

In doing so, he has underscored the almost total intransigence of the congressional Republicans, who, as he said in his Cincinnati campaign-style rally on Labor Day, have offered no answer or solution of their own. Rather, their spreading of such fictions as "death panels" that, as he put it, would "pull the plug on Grandma," has brought only heat and no light to the debate.

Television cameras, drawn to the often boisterous town-hall meetings as moths to light, may well have exaggerated the opposition to a health-care reform agenda not yet adequately explained and articulated to a concerned public. So here is Obama's golden opportunity, with both the public and Congress, to make his case.

His sweeping success as a presidential candidate last year certainly demonstrated he has the oratorical and persuasive talents to do so. And in a sense he has the advantage of a deflated opposition party that so conspicuously lacks health-care proposals of its own and so transparently is bent on bringing about his downfall as its first step toward political recovery.

But a mere campaign-style speech won't do the trick tonight. Obama needs to must take the wraps off the specific legislation he wants, and convincingly explain why the country requires it as an essential part of the economic recovery that remains his prime challenge at home.

Much is being said about how Obama "must" get health care reform or his administration will be strangled in its crib. The same, of course, was said 16 years ago when Bill Clinton and his wife made their early and concentrated push for the same. He not only survived but was reelected in 1996.

At the same time, the political stars could not be more favorably aligned for Obama, with those Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and those headless horsemen in the Republican saddle, giving hope of resurrection to the likes of Newt Gingrich.

The fact that Obama's favorability ratings in the polls are slipping only emphasizes the political opportunity that tonight's prime time televised speech on Capitol Hill presents to him. He is a man who thrives on drama and knows how to make the most of great settings. The occasion cries out for a clear demonstration of leadership that he has not yet sufficiently provided, for all his cool star quality.

Chances are Obama at his most inspiring is not likely to crack the hard crust of opposition from a desperate GOP still in shock after the political devastation of the George W. Bush years. More important for him will be combating the concerns among many liberal Democrats who, in their desire to see him as one of their own, fear he is already trimming his sails.