The Hill: What happened to the new plan?
The Hill locks onto an aspect of the President’s speech that escaped me during my earlier analysis, which is the expectation that Barack Obama would bring his own plan to Capitol Hill. The White House had told the press last week that Obama would take charge of the debate by offering a new plan that would address many of the concerns raised in the debate and assume leadership of the crusade. What happened to the Obama plan? It turned out to be a no-show…..
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Given the White House preparation for the press on this speech, it suggests that no one there has a clue what they’re doing on health-care reform, least of all the President himself. One day they’re insisting that the public option isn’t essential, then it is, then it’s not again, and then the President demands it on national television. They’ll have their own plan, they claim, and then Obama’s speech has no specifics but instead endorses HR3200.
If there’s a strategy involved here, it’s inscrutable. The only argument the White House appears to be making at the moment is one of incompetence, especially in messaging, and a growing sense of desperate flailing.
On the center-left, Eric Black agrees that this was no game-changer
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