He's doing a rather interesting thing here, which is trying to put his money where his mouth is on the idea of "bipartisanship" while not giving ground on key issues of fact about health care and the health insurance industry.

But in his meeting with the Republicans before, as great as the theatrics was, in the end what it boiled down to was "Why are you attacking, look at how Republican it is."

Ron Jacobs writes about it in his article "The Hollow Man Reaches His Omega Point" and he says that it reminded him of two very different poems: TS Elliot's "Hollow Man" and Randal Jarrell's "The Death of Ball Turret Gunner." (see www.counterpunch.com)

The book is about the cruelty of war and so is the Jarrell poem. It is powerful and everything what has to be said he managed to do in only 5 lines.

Its been years but I had to analize this poem as part of an English Final exam ... and it is heartbreaking ... just like war.

The professor had made a drawing of the plane on the blackboard and I remember I had to ask him a question about the Ball Turret Gunner's position in the plane. I will never forgot the impact it had on me.

http://www.fistfullofcode.com/writings/thedeathoftheballturrentgunner.pdf

Context: The real intended purpose/audience of today's summit (h/t Politico's Ben Smith):

The audience that matters most here is the handful of House Democrats whom Nancy Pelosi needs to flip to pass the Senate bill, and the larger number of wavering House Democrats.

The Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday postponed for the fourth time a vote on on the nomination of Dawn Johnsen to head the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel because of the White House health care summit with members of Congress this morning.

Committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said the health care summit, which several members of the panel attended, was an "extraordinary circumstance." Traditionally, panel members can only ask to hold over a nominee once.

Any excuse is a good excuse. Note, however, that the Senate Judiciary Committee was able to find time today, in spite of the healthcare summit, to pass a witness protection bill the DOJ sought. Oh, and the SJC also found time to approve the nominations of two US Attorney candidates, both of whom were just nominated by President Obama two months ago on December 24th. But they just couldn't find time for Dawn Johnsen, who was tapped by Obama to lead the OLC over a year ago, before Obama was even inaugurated.

[snip]

But the Senate, whether the Judiciary Committee or having 60 votes to obtain cloture on the floor, has never really been the hold up on confirmation of Dawn Johnsen; the failure has been an utter lack of desire by the Obama White House to confirm their own nominee.

He should go back to his specialty: parlaying his monotonously drab speaking voice into lucrative acting gigs.

Why did anyone think you could "discuss" health care with the GOP? All the summit did was present the Republicans with a nice platform for presenting, in an environment that provides the impression that they are to be taken seriously, all their ill-founded criticisms and really bad but somewhat plausibly packaged (in a marketing sense) ideas -- while, at the same time, forcing the Democrats to do the much harder job of both explaining and FACTUALLY defending their ideas while also refuting the Republicans' arguments and emotional assertions.

The Republicans understand that crafting an effective marketing message doesn't have much to do with facts or "truth," but instead requires grabbing attention, stoking emotion, and building identification. This summit gave them an opportunity to do all three things.

Why, when a couple of centuries of advertising and politics prove otherwise, do Dems keep thinking that when it comes to the art of persuasion intellect easily trumps emotion?

"We can have a philosophical disagreement in terms of how much insurance regulation is appropriate," the president also said. "We agree there has to be some, what are the specific ones you have to object to. Pre-existing conditions is one we theoretically all agree on. Let's not pretend that any form of regulation is some onerous burden that's going to result in some terrible thing that's going to happen to consumers."

ANd then CSpan shifted it to CSpan 3, which only a fraction of the country gets on their systems, and for quite some time there was literally nobody actually showing what was going on because all four nets were doing something else.

link

Query:  does this conclusion make sense in light of the analysis?  Don't think so.

But at the end of the day, Obama seemed resigned to waging a procedural fight in the Senate to steamroll Republicans, who otherwise can use their 41 votes to curb any legislation.

Such a brass-knuckled tactic could backfire on Democrats. Win and they get called arrogant. Lose and they're labeled arrogant failures.

I did like the line from Jon Stewart (no i didn't watch the 7 hour summit) -

Eric Cantor - Insurance would be cheaper if we got the gov't out entirely.

Obama - "We could set up a system where food was cheaper than it is right now if we just eliminated meat inspectors, and we eliminated any regulations on how food is distributed and how it's stored. I'll bet in terms of drug prices we would definitely reduce prescription drug prices if we didn't have a drug administration that makes sure that we test the drugs so that they don't kill us, but we don't do that"