Obama's make or break speech on health care reform

In case you live under a rock and haven't heard yet, President Obama will deliver a prime-time address Wednesday to a joint session of Congress aimed at regaining momentum in his push for universal health care coverage.

I think this speech will make or break him. If Obama says something new, breaks new policy ground, or charts a new path on achieving health care reform, his legislative efforts will be revived. But if he simply trots out the same old tropes (e.g., if you like your health care, you can keep it, even with a public option; were going to cover 50 million new people and reduce costs without rationing, etc.) he's finished.

The crux of the problem over at the White House appears to be that they think that the problems with health care reform thus far have been its packaging, not its substance. But as Charles Krauthamer said on Fox News, the problems is that "the dog won't eat the dog food."

In Sunday's New York Times, Jackie Calms writes:

In 1994, Democrats’ dysfunction over fulfilling a new president’s campaign promise contributed to the party’s loss of its 40-year dominance of Congress. Now that memory is being revived, and it is the message the White House and Congressional leaders will press when lawmakers return this week, still divided and now spooked after the turbulent town-hall-style meetings, downbeat polls and distortions of August.Republicans early on united behind the lesson they took from the past struggle, that they stand to gain politically in next year’s elections if Democrats do nothing. But the Democrats’ version similarly resonates with all party factions, giving Mr. Obama perhaps his best leverage to unify them to do something. In now-familiar financial parlance, this one is “too big to fail.”

Adding to this chorus is Joe Klein where he writes in the August 31, 2009 issue of Time that:

[H]onorable conservatives . . . have been overwhelmed by nihists and hypocrites more interested in destroying the opposition and gaining power than in the public weal. . . . The party's putative intellectuals [ouch!] are prosaic tactitians who make precious few substantive arguments but oppose health care reform mostly because passage would help Barrack Obama's political prospects.

(To digress for a moment, this statement ignores that the public option, which conservatives has been resisting for over 50 years, violates deeply held conservative principles. This statement also ignores the fact that in an August 31, 2009 poll, 51 percent of voters say that they oppose Obama's health care reforms. To paraphrase the February 7, 2009 cover of Newsweek, "We are all nihlists now.")

But in the Weekly Standard, Matthew Continetti writes:

For a while now, the message from Washington has been that we know what's good for the public, whether the public likes it or not. One after another, both parties have attempted to foist a series of grand reforms on a skeptical populace--in areas ranging from Social Security and immigration to energy and health care. Politicians have made decisions affecting millions of lives without accountability and oversight. The upshot has been more government, more debt, and--coming soon to a 1040 form near you--more taxes. No wonder the public is anxious.

* * *

As for the elites, especially the liberal elite: They remain deaf, dumb, and blind.

The White House is learning all the wrong lessons from Clinton's effort to reform health care 15 years ago. Those at the White House think that they will be punished by the voters for failing to reform health care.

But one of the reason voters revolted against the Democrats in 1994 was not that they failed to deliver on a campaign promise, but that their proposals scared the hell out of the American people. It's not that they failed, but they overstepped their mandate by trying to do far too much.The White House appears to think that the public generally wants its version of health care reform, it's just that the voters don't really know it yet. If Obama could just somehow find the magic words to turn things around.

In June, ABC News aired a one-hour special from the White House on health care reform. In July, Obama held a press conference on health care reform (where he made an unforced error by stepping into the Heny Louis Gates affair). Obama has also had numerous town halls, other speeches and conference calls on the subject. And now he's going to salvage the debate with yet another speech before a joint session of Congress?

The best advice for Obama (which I offer fully confident that he won't take it), is to seek passage for a plan that the American people can accept (no cancellation of policies for sick people, no denials due to preexisting conditions, vouchers for the poor, etc.) and ditching those they can't (public option, rationing, transfer of monies from Medicare), and declare at least a partial victory.

But because the White House thinks Obama can sell ice to eskimos and their refusal to see that their problems lie in the substance of health care reform, such moderation of the Left's health care agenda is not likely.

In the end, Obama will reiterate the same tired arguments he's been making for the past 3 months, soften or rename (but not eliminate) the need for a public option, make nice noises towards Republicans (although they already know that Obama thinks talk is cheap), and try to unify the Democrats saying that they'll pay at the next election if they don't do something now.

So get some beer, popcorn, nachos or other snacks to watch the President's address on Wednesday. This is going to be classic. He'll either save his bacon, or self-destruct. I'm betting on the latter.

Return here after the speech for my comments to see how I think Obama did.