by Jules Witcover

It finally appears to be dawning on President Obama that, if he wants not only to get health-care reform but also to save himself from the fate of a one-term presidency, he must shift from conciliator to tough party leader, and quickly.

For all his talk of allowing a six-week window for the Republican congressional leaders to offer specific reform alternatives, Obama must now put aside the olive branch so conclusively rejected by them, and concentrate on Democratic whip-cracking on Capitol Hill.

The obvious model for him is the Lyndon B. Johnson of the 1960s, who could schmooze with the best of them -- when schmoozing worked -- but knew when to start knocking heads in his own ranks when action was imperative.

He was famous, or infamous, for "the Johnson Treatment," his personally intimidating and literally in-your-face bullying of legislators in his own Democratic Party, be it as Senate majority leader or later as president. LBJ sold himself as a force not to be toyed with, and more often than not the arms he twisted yielded to him.

By either style or temperament, there has been no remotely similar "Obama Treatment" over the last year. The new president instead embarked on and sustained a posture of calm reasoning in pursuit of a bipartisanship too long absent in stalemated Washington.

But the very public exercise of more conciliation in last week's health-care "summit" served principally to lay bare the futility of that chase. The attending GOP leaders' demanded that all that had been done to date toward a bill be thrown out and that the administration start over from scratch.

Not only that, the Republicans pleaded with Obama to reject the parliamentary process of reconciliation, whereby simple majority votes in the House and Senate could pass health-care reform, end-running the super-majority of 60 votes required to block a GOP filibuster in the Senate. Their plea unmasked their fear the tactic could work in the end, snatching Democratic victory from the jaws of defeat.

Obama appears ready now to take the reconciliation route. To succeed, he needs to dive in personally to persuade recalcitrant House Democrats to put aside their reservations and come to his -- and in many cases their own -- political fortunes before the November congressional elections.

In this effort, much of the heavy lifting will fall to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose broad smile and femininity mask a steely partisanship and determination to hammer the Democrats' 76-vote majority into the decisive force in the House. Her own strong liberal philosophy in the past has often complicated that task in dealing with conservative Blue Dog Democrats and foes of abortion rights.

Since last week's White House health-care conference, however, Pelosi has confidently asserted a compromise between already passed House and Senate reform versions can be worked out and approved by her Democratic caucus, clearing the way for passage by simple majority vote.

Republican congressional leaders have argued unconvincingly that use of the reconciliation process by the Democrats will backfire, so infuriating voters that they will take their revenge in the fall midterm elections. Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee has gone so far as suggesting such an approach would amount to a "kamikaze" legislative attack by a desperate Obama.

Other Republicans cite numerous public-opinion polls indicating the American people don't want a reform bill "jammed down their throats," as the Republicans put it, through a tricky backroom process. But inasmuch as reconciliation has more often been used by Republicans in Congress than Democrats, this may be a hard sell for them.

The good legislators may pay great attention to the means by which bills navigate the complicated route to enactment. But what usually gets through to most voters, and is of most concern to them, is the legislation itself and what it broadly professes to do, not how it got passed.

For better or for worse, Obama made health-care reform the poster child of his young administration in its first year. If he fails to achieve it now, and fails to show himself as a tough and effective arm-twister for it in Congress, the prospects for the rest of his term will be severely undermined.

 

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On Presidential Jawboning | Jules Witcover

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