IF HE ACTUALLY WERE INTELLIGENT AND AN ADEPT POLITICIAN...:

Healthcare summit ends: GOP scores, but both sides still far apart (Linda Feldmann, February 25, 2010 , CS Monitor)

Rep. Paul Ryan (R) of Wisconsin, the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, came armed with numbers about the Senate Democratic bill from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Calling the Senate bill “full of gimmicks and smoke-and-mirrors,” Representative Ryan said it “has 10 years of tax increases, about a half a trillion dollars, with 10 years of Medicare cuts, about half a trillion dollars, to pay for six years of spending.”

“Now, what’s the true 10-year cost of this bill in 10 years?” he continued. “That’s $2.3 trillion.”

Obama sought to frame the numbers differently, but Ryan had made his point. If Obama gets credit for welcoming Republicans to the table, the Republicans get credit for coming prepared.

GOP 1, Obama 1, Democrats 0: Obama and Republicans seemed reasonable. That's bad news for Democrats. (John Dickerson, Feb. 25, 2010, Slate)

If the White House health care summit was political theater, here's a 30-second review: President Obama won. So did congressional Republicans. Democrats in Congress need another act. This is not because Obama is such a better speaker and advocate for the legislation than his allies, though he is. It's because Democrats didn't get much political benefit from the event. [...]

According to strategists involved in 2010 races, fence-sitting Democrats needed to see Obama change the political dynamic. He needed to show how health care reform could be defended and how Republicans could be brought low. He did neither. White House aides and the president himself said he was going to press Republicans for how their plans would work, but he did that only twice—and mildly. There was no put-up-or-shut-up moment.

Obama debated Republicans vigorously and with precision—but it looked like a debate among people with actual philosophical differences, which in part it was. After an in-the-weeds debate about how the Congressional Budget Office accounted for premium increases, it became clear that the debate was between Democrats who want to set minimum standards for coverage and Republicans who want the market and individual choice to rule.

...one might be tempted to conclude he was showing that he can work with the GOP and congressional Democrats are just a nuisance to be gotten rid of in November. The reality is things probably didn't go the way he expected.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 25, 2010 8:38 PM