Needlenose

Jackie Calmes of the New York Times reports tonight:

President Obama is planning for “a new season” of more hands-on advocacy for his troubled domestic priority, an overhaul of the health care system, according to his advisers. Among the likely steps would be a nationally televised speech that close allies have urged, and a 10-year price tag for the overhaul below the $1 trillion mark.

Mr. Obama met on Tuesday with advisers including Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, and David Axelrod, a senior strategist, to prepare for Congress’s return to work next week after a month in which many lawmakers have been spooked by contentious townhall meetings and polls registering slipping support for the president and his health care plans.

. . . The White House recalibration in part reflects how patience has run out with the efforts of the Senate Finance Committee chairman, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, to reach a bipartisan deal after two of his three Republican negotiating partners—Senators Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa—in recent days attacked the Democrats’ efforts publicly.

Of course, anyone with any sense knew from the start that the Baucus “bipartisan deal” effort was a waste of time (in fact, an intentional one).

In the Washington Post, Norman Ornstein offers a lame rationalization reasonable-sounding explanation of why Obama & Co. put up with it.  I’m not sure that it’s more convincing than the competing theories (e.g., sheer stupidity, or fealty to corporate interests), but I’m sufficiently traumatized — yes, still — by the 1994 debacle to sit back and let the results, or lack of them, speak for themselves.

Stumble it!

Tags: Healthcare reform, President Obama

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 10:18 pm by Swopa and is filed under Healthcare reform. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.