1. The Scott Brown victory shook up the White House, and Rahm Emanuel proposed switching to a more modest reform, a "skinny bill." "Mr. Obama seemed open to the idea.... Ms. Pelosi scoffed. 'Kiddie care,' she called [it] derisively, in private."
2. Obama believes that health care is "what his presidency is about" (according to Tom Daschle). (Let me observe that this is not the way he presented himself during the campaign)
3. Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama don't seem to get along too well. On February 4th, they had a conversation in which one of the lines, spoken by Obama, was: “I’m not a stupid man.”
4. "Many Democrats say [Pelosi's] upbeat, unflappable attitude buoyed them through the darkest days after Massachusetts. But faced with a member she considered intransigent, she could be 'scary tough,' as one person involved in her strategy sessions said. She would stand up, her high heels and imperiousness exaggerating her height, and talk sternly."
Why didn't the congressional Democrats defend their own bill? If it was so terribly wrong to say "death panels" — and what indignation was expressed! — then why wasn't it easy to crush stupid, crazy Sarah for what she so outrageously said? By backing down and removing the language she leveraged, they not only seem to admit she had a point, they sacrifice credibility that they need to promote what's left of the bill.
Advanced even this week by Republican stalwarts including the party’s last vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, and Charles E. Grassley, the veteran Iowa senator, the nature of the assertion nonetheless seemed reminiscent of the modern-day viral Internet campaigns that dogged Mr. Obama last year, falsely calling him a Muslim and questioning his nationality.
"Seemed reminiscent"? To whom? "Death panels" was a characterization of a provision in a bill — an aggressive, politicized attempt at interpretation of the text of the proposed law. It was a parry in the debate about the bill, and the bill's defenders could have explained exactly why the text could not mean what Palin said it meant, or they could have rewritten the provision to make it absolutely clear that it meant whatever it was that they'd wanted it to mean when they wrote it. Rather than meet Palin's attack, the Democrats pulled the provision altogether, leaving us wondering what other provisions would have to be pulled if someone subjected them to a memorable — viral — attack.
When a big bill is dumped on us, we are challenged to read and understand the text. Usually we don't, but the text is there, and there's nothing scurrilous about trying to read it, calling attention to worrisome language, and putting our arguments in vivid words. A candidate, on the other hand, is not a text to be read, but there are facts about him that we may want to know. If someone asserts a fact about a candidate and says, for example, that Obama is a Muslim or Obama was born in Kenya, then the candidate, if he doesn't choose to ignore the assertion or simply make his own flat assertion of denial, is forced to come up with some evidence, which may be difficult and may lead to a new phase of the controversy in which the evidence is challenged.
This is completely different from a controversy about a written text that people are trying to read. If the text doesn't mean what its opponents are saying, it should be easy for the authors of the text to show how it means something good or to amend the text and make its goodness obvious. The authors of the text should trounce their opponents. If they can't, we should fear and mistrust them.
If Obama can't convincingly prove he's not a Muslim/not born in Kenya, it only means the rumors might be true, but he was not the creator of the rumor, as the Democrats were the creators of the text that lent itself to Palin's "death panels" characterization.
There is nothing in any of the legislative proposals that would call for the creation of death panels or any other governmental body that would cut off care for the critically ill as a cost-cutting measure. But over the course of the past few months, early, stated fears from anti-abortion conservatives that Mr. Obama would pursue a pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia agenda, combined with twisted accounts of actual legislative proposals that would provide financing for optional consultations with doctors about hospice care and other “end of life” services, fed the rumor to the point where it overcame the debate.
On Thursday, Mr. Grassley said in a statement that he and others in the small group of senators that was trying to negotiate a health care plan had dropped any “end of life” proposals from consideration.
Ha ha. I think that "On Thursday" paragraph had to be edited in a the last minute.
A pending House bill has language authorizing Medicare to finance beneficiaries’ consultations with professionals on whether to authorize aggressive and potentially life-saving interventions later in life. Though the consultations would be voluntary, and a similar provision passed in Congress last year without such a furor, Mr. Grassley said it was being dropped in the Senate “because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly.”
Not just "interpreted... incorrectly" but "implemented incorrectly"! Well, there you have it! We are absolutely right to fear the way laws may be implemented. What does "incorrectly" even mean? If the language is there to be implemented a particular way, what should we care if the members of Congress preserved an out for themselves, letting them say that was not what they meant? It only makes it more underhanded!
The extent to which it and other provisions have been misinterpreted in recent days, notably by angry speakers at recent town hall meetings but also by Ms. Palin — who popularized the “death panel” phrase — has surprised longtime advocates of changes to the health care system.
"Misinterpreted in recent days"... and potentially misimplemented in future days, when it's too late and the law's the law.
... Former Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, an advocate for the health care proposals, said he was occasionally confronted with the “forced euthanasia” accusation at forums on the plans, but came to see it as an advantage. “Almost automatically you have most of the audience on your side,” Mr. Daschle said. “Any rational normal person isn’t going to believe that assertion.”
Yes. Then why didn't Democrats argue their side? Why did they back down? I suspect it's because they really did hope to save money by substituting painkillers for curative treatments for the old and disabled.
Okay. I understand. Thanks for the explanation, WaPo. He's rich and prominently sexy. He can't go into government without major flash and admiration. And some people were even going to pick at his credentials, maybe beat him up the way they did to poor little Tom. That won't do.
Obama is giving soooooo much raw material to his opponents, who have — from Day 1 — been trying to frame him as a miserable failure — which exactly what Bush's opponents did to Bush.
You know what's really funny? That term — "miserable failure" — that was pinned on Bush so relentlessly? Do you remember who started that meme?
ADDED: Upon the suggestion, in the comments, that Richard Gephardt called Bush a "miserable failure" before Tom Daschle, I did a methodical search and found this from December 9th 2002:
"Their trickle-down economic theories have been a miserable failure, and this is an admission of that miserable failure," Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle told CNN.
The earliest Gephardt example was from January 21, 2003. To be accurate, I did find this earlier quote:
The absolutely miserable failure of this administration on economics is what brings us to this point.
That's from November 7, 1991. It's about Bush all right. Bush I.
Obama can move on, and Daschle can slink away and, sidelined, rake in millions.
ADDED: Jame Taranto says:
Daschle had become such an embarrassment for the administration that even the New York Times called in an editorial for him to skedaddle. Noting that Daschle, like Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, attributed his tax shortfall to "unintentional oversights," the paper opines: "Mr. Daschle is one oversight case too many." The newspaper that gave us the "one-grope rule" for Democratic sexual harassment now has promulgated a similar one for nonpayment of taxes.
You need to understand that if you want to know why it never occurred to him that he needed to report it as taxable income:
As a legal tax matter, this isn't even a close call. Mr. Daschle says he used the car service about 80% for personal use, and 20% for business. But his spokeswoman says it only dawned on the Senator last June that this might be taxable income. Mr. Daschle's excuse? According to a Journal report Friday, "he told committee staff he had grown used to having a car and driver as majority leader and did not think to report the perk on his taxes, according to staff members."
So... I infer that the Senators — or Senate leaders — have their cars and drivers that are excluded from taxable income even when used for personal things. I'm not outraged by that, actually — because they are underpaid — but it is delusional to continue to see yourself as above the law after you've been ousted from the government. Once you take your government reputation and sell it in the private market for big bucks, you must bend to the normal law that binds the rest of us peons.
ADDED: In 1998, Tom said: "Make no mistake, tax cheaters cheat us all, and the IRS should enforce our laws to the letter." I take it that means Tom would like to be thrown in prison for quite a few years. It's especially appropriate for someone who is responsible for making the laws what they are.
President Obama’s choice for health secretary, Tom Daschle, was aware as early as last June that he might have to pay back taxes for the use of a car and driver provided by a private equity firm, but did not inform the Obama transition team until weeks after Mr. Obama named him to the health secretary’s post, senior administration officials said Saturday.
I guess Gibbs means that nobody is trying to hide anything now... now that what they were trying to hide has been brought to light and there's no way to hide it.
"I think Senator Daschle rightly is going to have to answer questions, but I think members will be satisfied with the answers that he gives and will understand that he’s the right man for the job."
Why will members be satisfied with the answers? Because there's always an exception whenever we really, really want there to be an exception? Do you think Gibbs is a good enough bullshitter to be press secretary? It's not a stand-up comedy slot.
