Health Care Summit Happily Brings Period Of Bipartisan Illusioneering To An End

President Barack Obama, left, and Senator Alexander, sitting next to Senator McCain, who gave the Republicans’ opening statement. "It was sort of his classroom," Mr. Alexander said in an interview. By day’s end, it seemed clear that the all-day session might have driven the parties even farther apart. | Stephen Crowley/The New York Times | More Photos >>

Jason Linkins, The Huffington Post | Full Story | The seven-hour session of talk was essentially a lengthy encounter session. The White House needed to look open-minded, the Republicans needed to turn the recitation of talking points into a cathartic experience, and the overall presentation was a political theater performed by players far too cautious to make a spectacle of themselves.

For the process-obsessed media, however, the whole thing proved to be reliable catnip. And the good news for Republicans appears to be that because they didn’t enter the room and behave like a gang of raving dicks, they’ll be declared the winners of the summit by the thinnest of margins and reasoning. >>

Published 10.02.26 00:00:00 -0500 GMT | Posted by Andrew Garib on 10.02.28 | On the Web at: http://saveandrewgarib.com/articles/714 |