greydruid

[A]t such crucial moments, presidents don't issue a policy paper. They give a speech. It gives tone and texture. It allows their policy to be imbued with purpose and feeling. This one was festooned with hedges, caveats, and one giant exit ramp.

No one expected Obama to do a Henry V or a Churchill. But Obama could not even manage a George W. Bush, who, at an infinitely lower ebb in power and popularity, opposed by the political and foreign-policy establishments and dealing with a war effort in far more dire straits, announced his surge — Iraq 2007 — with outright rejection of withdrawal or retreat. His implacability was widely decried at home as stubbornness, but heard loudly in Iraq by those fighting for and against us as unflinching — and salutary — determination.

Obama's surge speech wasn't a commander-in-chief's, but a politician's, perfectly splitting the difference. Two messages for two audiences. Placate the Right — you get the troops; placate the Left — we are on our way out.

And apart from Obama's own personal commitment is the question of his ability as a wartime leader. If he feels compelled to placate his left with an exit date today — while he is still personally popular, with large majorities in both houses of Congress, and even before the surge begins — how will he stand up to the Left when the going gets tough and the casualties mount, and he really has to choose between support from his party and success on the battlefield?

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Mr. Lieberman says that while he is not "a conspiratorial person," he believes the public option is intended as a way for the government to take over health care. "I've been working for health-care reform in different ways since I arrived here," he says. "It was always about how do we make the system more efficient and less costly, and how do we expand coverage to people who can't afford it, and how do we adopt some consumer protections from the insurance companies . . . So where did this public option come from?" It was barely a blip, he says, in last year's presidential campaign.

"I started to ask some of my colleagues in the Democratic caucus, privately, and two of them said "some in our caucus, and some outside in interest groups, after the president won such a great victory and there were more Democrats in the Senate and the House, said this is the moment to go for single payer.'" So, I joke, the senator is, in fact, as big a "conspiracy theorist" as me. He laughingly rejoins: "But I have evidence!"

Mr. Lieberman notes that the public option serves no other purpose: "It doesn't help one poor person get insurance who doesn't have it now. It doesn't compel one insurance company to provide insurance to somebody who has an illness. And . . . it doesn't do anything to reduce the cost of insurance."

Mr. Lieberman dismisses Democratic arguments that it is necessary to keep insurers honest. "Sometimes the private sector does things that are wrong, and when they do, you regulate—sometimes you litigate," he says. "But never in the history of America . . . have we tried to keep one industry honest by having government go into that business to compete with the industry."

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At your exact age, Karen Carpenter died from heart failure as a complication of anorexia. She was a singer and drummer in the legendary brother-sister band The Carpenters.

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Count em
1, 2, 3
Peter, Paul, and Mary
Gettin' down with 3P
Everybody loves (Oh)