Joe Klein of TIME offers little of interest in his latest plea for action on ObamaCare.
But Klein?s frustration about Congress? inaction on a final health-care deal leads to at least one cogent observation about the Democratic leadership. He offers this assessment of congressional Democrats? performance during the president?s recent health-care summit:
[Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid did make a statement; it was filled with platitudes, anchored by an emotional anecdote. It was the sort of statement that seemed old a year ago, when the health care reform death march began. It did nothing to advance the negotiations, or to discomfort the Republicans. It followed a very similar statement by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It was followed by a raft of near identical statements by the other Democrats ? almost all of them sclerotic committee chairs with far more seniority than debating skill. They produced a Woodstock of heart-tugging anecdotes, but not much else … except, perhaps, another demonstration of the smug Democratic incompetence that got us to this point.
Ah, yes, smug incompetence ? just the characteristics you would want exhibited by people with decision-making authority about health-care decisions.
