Presidents get lots of advice ahead of a State of the Union speech — from their staffers, their party colleagues on Capitol Hill, and from the media. Somehow, I doubt that Barack Obama will take this piece of advice offered by Senator Ted Cruz on CBS’ Face the Nation yesterday, even if yet another poll shows that it might be a good idea:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD7oDpFh5WY

“For the State of the Union, one of the things President Obama really ought to do is look in the TV camera and say to the over five million Americans all across this country who have had their health insurance cancelled because of Obamacare — to look in the camera and say, ‘I’m sorry,’” the Republican senator from Texas suggested during an interview with Bob Schieffer on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday . “‘I told you if you like your health insurance plan you can keep it. I told you if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor. And that wasn’t true. I’m sorry.’”

“But then, Bob, here is the real kicker. If you are really sorry you just don’t say you’re sorry, you actually do something to fix the problem,” Cruz continued. “The pattern we’ve seen over and over again with this president is he says he’s sorry — he expresses outrage — but then he doesn’t fix the problem. He keeps doing it over and over again.”

Cruz also claimed vindication for Republicans in the fight against ObamaCare. “Millions of people across the country have seen now why we were standing and fighting,” Cruz told Schieffer, “because ObamaCare is a disaster.”

And Cruz isn’t the only one who thinks so, either. A new poll from the Associated Press shows Americans overwhelmingly disenchanted with the new health-insurance regime, even if the worst political impact has lessened somewhat:

Negative perceptions of the health care rollout have eased, a new Associated Press-GfK poll finds. But overall, two-thirds of Americans say things still aren’t going well.

Of those who’ve tried to sign up, or who live with someone who has, 71 percent have encountered problems. But the share reporting success jumped to 40 percent from a meager 24 percent in December. …

In December, 76 percent of adults had said the opening of the new markets was not going well. Such negative perceptions have now fallen 10 points to 66 percent.

Still, rave reviews remain rare.

Only 4 percent said things were going extremely or very well, while another 17 percent said things were going somewhat well.

Compare that to 38 percent who said the rollout had gone not at all well. Another 28 percent said things were not going too well. Add those together and it makes up two-thirds of the public.

Do 66% of the American public deserve a clear and sincere apology from the President who told them for years that they could keep their plans if they liked their plans? Of course. Will they get it? Of course not, at least not until the political situation looks like this:

The best prediction for that kind of political situation? In October, when the employer mandate disrupts the group-insurance market as badly as ObamaCare disrupted the individual market.