This NYT article about the "journey" toward ObamaCare is an odd mix of juicy nuggets and dreamy blather.

The juicy nuggets:

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."

If it was completely wrong for Sarah Palin to say "death panels," why did the Senate scuttle the provision she was talking about?

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.

Here's the NYT article headlined "False 'Death Panel' Rumor Has Some Familiar Roots":

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.

What happened with Sanjay Gupta?

"Gupta, who was once named one of the 'sexiest men alive' by People Magazine, was never officially named to the post and continued to report on CNN. He did not issue a statement or explain his decision Thursday. Sources said the medical journalist told CNN executives that he wanted to devote more time to his medical practice and to his duties at the network. But one source close to him said he was very disheartened by Daschle's fate and fearful he was not going to get a prominent role in the health reform process."

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.

"I bet Barack Obama yearns for the days when he was only *running* for President."

"That's what he was good at. He'll have to reach much deeper into himself to find leadership, if it's there, and not just the idea, the mirage of it. It's scary and funny to see him so shaken by trying to ride the jackass bronc of Congressional Democrats and the mad bull elephant of House Republicans. Now we're getting somewhere. I don't think he'll completely fail, but it will be an unnerving while until he finds his seat."

***

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?

Tom Daschle!

Karma.

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.

Matt Welch vs. Tom Daschle's glasses.

Daschle withdraws.

Obama accepts it "with sadness and regret."

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.

What the sidewalk is to you, a limousine and chauffeur is to Tom Daschle.

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.

Obama press Secretary Robert Gibbs on Daschle: "The president believes that nobody is perfect, but that nobody is trying to hide anything."

Huh? Obviously, Daschle was trying to hide a lot!

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.

What's the matter with Illinois?

That was the gist of a question for Barack Obama at his press conference just now.

All but one of the questions were about the Blagojevich scandal -- even though O's topic of the day was health care. (He introduced Tom Daschle as his pick for HHS secretary.)

He didn't answer that question, unsurprisingly. Not that he called it out of bounds. He just followed a strategy -- as he did for all the Blagojevich questions -- of saying, essentially, I'm one of the good guys and Blagojevich is one of the bad guys.

Why do bad things seem to keep coming from Illinois government? You'll have to accept as the answer that there is also good from Illinois, and he is on the side of the good.

ADDED: The news conference is detailed here:

He was asked how the governor got the impression that neither Mr. Obama nor his senior adviser, Valerie Jarrett, a possible pick for the Senate seat, were “willing to play ball and why he said those unrepeatable things about you.” A second part of the question referred to the previous governor of Illinois who is “still moldering” in federal prison, raising the question: What’s wrong with Illinois?

Mr. Obama said he could not speculate what was going on in the governor’s mind.

And he repeated what he said a few minutes ago, that he believes there are two different views of politics. One involves sacrifice and public service, the other is that politics is a business, “you’re wheeling and dealing and what’s in it for me?” He noted that there are good politicians in Illinois.

If the allegations against the governor are true, he said, “this is sort of the far end of the spectrum, that business mentality of politics.”

He added that his own campaign was about changing that view of politics. “You can get elected by playing it straight,” he said. “You can get elected by doing the right thing.”

Daschle's back. He'll be servicing the humans.

He's the new Secretary of Health and Human Services.

"Where, when he could have used them, were Obama's oh-so-famous endorsers?"

Daniel Henniger notes the famous names:

Jesse Jackson, Ted Kennedy, Oprah, John Kerry, Chris Dodd, Patrick Leahy, Tom Daschle, Amy Klobuchar, Claire McCaskill, Jay Rockefeller, John Lewis, Toni Morrison, Roger Wilkins, Eric Holder, Robert Reich, Ted Sorenson, Alice Walker, David Wilhelm, Cornel West, Clifford Alexander, Donald McHenry, Patricia Wald, Newton Minow?

Where were all the big-city mayors who went over to the Obama camp: Chicago's Richard Daley, Cleveland's Frank Jackson, Atlanta's Shirley Franklin, Washington's Adrian Fenty, Newark's Cory Booker, Baltimore's Sheila Dixon?

It isn't hard for big names to get on talk TV to make a point. Any major op-ed page would have stopped the presses to print a statement of support from Ted Kennedy or such for the senator. None appeared. Call it profiles in gopher-holing.

Why is Obama so alone? Are his powerful supporters afraid of saying the wrong thing and angering black voters? Or does precisely the right thing need to be said — and Obama is the only person on the face of the earth who is capable of determining what that precisely right thing is?

Perhaps it's the unpleasantness of trying to draw the line between religion and politics. Or of drawing the line between race and religion. Is the line between religion and politics different in the black community for historical and cultural reasons? But these are not such exquisitely delicate matters, that you can't make bland but emphatic statements of support, and the people listed above aren't the type who hold their tongues until they know what to say.

So why did they hang Obama out to dry?

Senator Feingold lectures at the Law School.

The topic: "Upholding an Oath to the Constitution: A Legislator's Responsibilities." Russ Feingold spoke about his devotion to the oath he took as a senator to uphold the Constitution and the second oath he took for the Clinton impeachment trial. Feingold was the only Democratic senator to vote against the motion to dismiss the impeachment. He applied a legal standard to the motion and had to vote the way he did because he could not say that there was no chance of proving the charges against the President. Democratic senators admitted to him in private that he was right. "It was a vote where I tried to move beyond partisanship."

Feingold talked about his campaign finance reform law, which he cared about because he was "tired" of hearing that politics was "about money, not ideas." He reminisced about the court case, challenging the constitutionality of the law, and described sitting through a nine-hour deposition conducted by the great First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams. Abrams began his questioning praising Feingold to his face for his reputation for upholding the Constitution. As Feingold put it later in the question session, Abrams spent the nine hours "trying to confuse me." I'd say the praise that he started off with was a deliberate effort to unnerve the senator. Feingold could hold his ground, he thought, because he believed his position was consistent with his oath to protect the Constitution, because "we spent a great deal of time crafting that bill" to avoid constitutional violations. He respected the Supreme Court's precedent on campaign finance regulation, even to the point of regretting a vote he had cast early on in his career about amending the Constitution to overrule Buckley v. Valeo. The First Amendment should not be diminished, he thought, even by the amendment process.

He spoke about the Patriot Act and his anguish at the speed with which it was pushed through the Senate, beginning with a closed door hearing on October 3, 2001. After Feingold voiced his civil liberties concerns, Attorney General John Ashcroft telephoned him, and, in that conversation, Ashcroft, according to Feingold, agreed that Feingold had raised many reasonable concerns, but that he still wanted his support. Later, according to Feingold, "the White House overruled Ashcroft."

[NOTE: The remainder of this post is an attempt at reconstruction of text that disappeared mysteriously on April 23, 2005. To do the reconstruction, I went back to my handwritten notes and also used two paragraphs that were quoted on Instapundit.]

Feingold objected to this sort of "legislation on the fly." Many members of Congress admitted to him that they had not read the text of the Patriot Act. A procedure was adopted that barred amendments, and the text had not gone through the Judiciary Committee, so there had been no chance to call attention to constitutional problems. Feingold decided to oppose unanimous consent because he "felt he had no choice" and he needed to uphold his oath to the Constitution. He described a difficult conversation he had on the floor of the Senate with Tom Daschle as "suffocating. " Feingold offered his amendments, and Daschle oppposed him, in what Feingold called a "frightening scene." With deep disapproval, Feingold quoted Daschle as saying "My argument is not substantive, it's procedural."

In his work on the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Feingold said he votes against amending the Constitution. He thinks it is better to craft legislation so that it is constitutional (as in the case of campaign finance reform) or simply to reject the amendment as not important enough (as with flag burning).

He ended his speech with the observation that it has been complex to keep his oath to uphold the Constitution and that he has "struggled constantly to get it right."

He took a few questions from the audience. The first was from Professor Alan Weisbard, who asked if a legislator has a duty to interpret the Constitution independently from the courts. Feingold said that there was an obligation not to pass the law if it was clearly unconstitutional, but that he didn't need to be certain or to predict what the Court would say. He could vote for the law as long as he had a good faith belief it would be upheld. "The presumption is it's constitutional unless somebody tells me it really can't fly." This seemed odd to me and made me rethink his opposition to the Patriot Act. Where was the presumption? Must it not be that he opposed the Patriot Act as a matter of policy?

My colleague Jim Jones asked him what he does if he's convinced the Supreme Court has gotten a decision wrong. Feingold said he tries to craft the legislation to avoid the constitutional problems and that he also looks to elections to change who is on the Court. Feingold seemed to be thinking again of the campaign finance reform law, which I don't think was what Jones had it mind. Jones was, I think, concerned about the perniciously wrong cases, like Plessy v. Ferguson. With some more prodding, Feingold said he said he believes the cases that permit the death penalty are wrong, but that the new death penalty case (making it unconstitutional to execute a person who committed his crime as a juvenile) is an "exciting example of how the Constitution can evolve." Jones, still not satisfied, asked whether he was just counting the Justices' votes, and Feingold said he mostly had to accept that they are right, for example, with the Line Item Veto case. "I respected it ... that's the normal situation," he said, but he acknowledged that there are "extreme situations" he'd treat differently. He then joked that this really was like being back in law school, which drew a big laugh from the crowd.



I would never have said this out loud, but I couldn't help thinking how interesting it was that Feingold shaped his whole lecture around the sanctity of the oath, when just a few days ago he announced that he was getting a divorce, his second. Was I the only one who thought how strange it was to hear a man piously invoke a passionate fidelity to an oath when he had -- so conspicuously -- gone back on the marriage oath twice?

But I like Senator Feingold. I do think he's a good man. I don't presume to know what happens to people in their marriages, and I am divorced myself. Nevertheless, he could have discussed his devotion to the Constitution from some perspective other than the fact that he'd sworn an oath. Taking an oath to the Constitution, after all, is not the strongest reason to support it.

UPDATE: Many of the commenters think it isn't fair for me to compare marriage vows and the oath to support the Constitution. And one commenter asks the interesting question: "What on earth can account for the view that amending the constitution is wrong but that allowing the constitution to 'evolve' under the watch of political judges (with no Constitutional basis for this evolution) is preferable." Here's the answer I give in the comments:

Thanks for making me think about that! There really is an answer. The idea is that it's terrible to amend the Constitution because you're taking away something that's there. We've been revering the First Amendment (to take the prominent example) all this time, and it would be unseemly to use political power to remove it as an obstacle. But if a court would just say, that obstacle you imagine really doesn't exist, then you haven't wielded political power against the revered document. Of course, [Feingold] still supports using political power to stock the courts with people who will perceive the evolution he wants them to perceive. It all just works so much better if you can get a judge to do it for you. Plus it is very hard to amend the Constitution, so if you try, you'll probably fail, and your enemies will rake you over the coals the whole time -- for wanting to change the Constitution. Acting through the courts is so much more politically palatable. And the beauty of it is that you can continue to lavish praise on yourself for your devotion to the Constitution.

Night 2 of the Convention: between Kennedy and Obama.

Daschle and Mosely Braun said nothing of interest as far as I noticed. Mosely Braun stressed out her voice and hurt my poor ears. Can't they turn up the sound levels and coach the speakers to speak to the people watching at home in their living rooms? This speaking to the huge auditorium is quite likely to get Kerry in trouble later this week, as his manner of speaking is insufferable when he's projecting into a large room. And we all know that speaking (and screaming) to a large, noisy crowd was fatal to Dean's candidacy.



Speaking of which: Here's Howard Dean. "I bet he screams as a joke," I say. At least, he'll make a joke about it. If he made a joke about his fatal scream or said anything at all amusing or interesting, I didn't notice.



Christie Vilsack is the next speaker, for some reason. Why is the wife of a governor one of the speakers? It can't just be that they needed more women. They had a whole gang of women Senators lined up on the stage last night. Christie is wearing a lovely, shiny, pink, polka-dotted jacket. That counts for something.



Governor Janet Napolitano. Health care, health care, health care. John Kerry knows healthy children grow up stronger! No way that dummy Bush could figure that out.

Comparing campaign letters. In a seeming testament to my political moderation, today's mail brought envelopes from both the Democratic National Headquarters ("Bushspeak/What you hear isn't what you get") and the South Dakota Republican Party ("Tom Daschle is hoping you will throw this letter away..."). Well, that's fair warning not to open either letter, but I did anyway.

"Ann, not only is this a fight we CAN win ... it is a fight we MUST win." Thanks for the personal touch. Either letter might have said that, but that line is urging me to fund the fight against Daschle, for his "extreme partisanship and obstruction of President Bush's agenda." According to the SD Republican Party letter Daschle has a 59% disapproval rating among South Dakota voters, and somehow this should encourage me to send them money. If SD voters dislike him so much, presumably he'll lose.

The Democrat's letter, from Nancy Pelosi, is mellower than her previous missives. It studiously avoids using the words "lie," "lying," and "liar," and goes with "haven't been straight," "misled us," "made promises they haven't kept," "I'm going to tell you the truth," "misleading rhetoric," "empty promises," "credibility gap," "the truth is," "in fact..," "the truth is," "the stark reality is," "his rhetoric is far from reality," "Bush has said one thing and done another," "what's really going on," and "get the word out about the real President Bush." Well, that's nice. I hate overheated rhetoric, that is, I'm not fond of it. And these so polite Democrats are not just asking for money, they want me to sign a "Statement of Affirmation," which seems a bit creepy to me:

As a proud American and a loyal Democrat, I am today rejecting the politics of privilege for the few and callous neglect of the many, and affirming my belief:

In a government characterized by fairness that keeps its promises to its citizens

In a government strong enough and caring enough to promise "compassion" to those in greatest need and really mean it.

In the deep conviction that the most blessed and affluent democracy in the worlds history--one that can spend billions on war and the weapons of war--can also create jobs for those that want them, educate its young, care for its elderly and infirm, provide hope for its destitute and downtrodden, protect its environment and guarantee equal rights and opportunity for all its citizens.

"Affirmation"? "Blessed"? It's just politics, people, it's not a religion. And why doesn't this "affirmation" appear on the web anywhere (so I could link to it)? Insiders only? Afraid of mockery?