The Hill takes a look at President Obama’s health care speech and finds it wanting:
[W]hile the speech once again illustrated the president’s extraordinary oratory skills, it was not a game changer and appears to leave the president with the same quandary: Healthcare has become the pinnacle legislative issue of his first term, but has divided his party in Congress and run into almost universal GOP opposition. Polls suggest Americans are not convinced reform will help their lives and it is unclear whether the legislation Obama seeks will reach his desk.
Obama was expected to take the wheel on healthcare reform after the Democratic-led Congress drove it into a ditch over the summer, but it did not appear he did so.
As he as done throughout 2009, Obama is largely deferring to lawmakers on the details. His address drew laughs from Republicans when he said some details still needed to be worked out.
And that, I think, may end up being Obama’s biggest mistake.
Fifteen years ago, Bill Clinton lost the health care debate largely because he maintained such exclusive control over the makeup of the package that even the identity of the people that Hillary Clinton was meeting with when the bill was being written was not being made public. Clinton spent little time building up a Congressional coalition so that when the time came for House and Senate Democrats to decide whether the bill was more important than their careers, they choose the option most likely to save their careers.
Barack Obama’s mistake may have been that he went too far in the opposite direction in letting Congressional Democrats have near-exclusive control over the content and fate of the health care package. Obama’s leadership on this issue — supposedly the most important of the crucial first year of his Presidency — has been abysmal, and he’s suffered for it.
