Someone asked Michael Steele a very simple, very elementary question about health care reform—does he support an individual requirement?—and he did not seem to know what that meant.

"What do you mean by an individual requirement?" Michael Steele asked.

The argument for an individual mandate is that when young and healthy people pay into the system, it pools risk and helps reduce the cost of caring for the elderly and infirm, which is what the young and healthy will eventually become, and then they'll certainly want the kids to subsidize them. That is a pretty simple concept, right? Not to the head of the Republican National Committee, apparently! Once it was explained to him, he would not actually say anything about it.

"Again, that is one of those areas where there is different opinions...I don't do policy," he said. "My point in coming here today was to begin to set a tone, and a theme if you will."

Well, no, it is not Michael Steele's job to "do policy," but it should probably be his job to understand his party's position on policy, because he is in charge of selling it?