PHOTOS, PAGE 1

       Editor and prime reporter is Doug Terry, a veteran television and radio reporter in   Washington, DC, (details below)

Now we know, ladies and gentlemen, why presidents of the United States do not normally sit down with members of Congress, especially with television cameras on, for meetings about policy and legislation. Presidents, you see, have responsibilities, Congressmen, even Senators, don’t. The great summit meeting was nothing but hour after hour of posturing and political point making.

Presidents have to produce results. All that a member of Congress need produce is enough noise acceptable to the people back home to get reelected. We don’t want government in charge of health care, one Republican House member lectured the president, “we want people in charge”. Well, gee, that’s a nice idea. How do we get there?

Mitch McConnell, the leader of Republicans in the Senate, was repeating his opening points hours later during the closing section of this great “debate”. The American people don’t favor this bill, he repeated. The American people also don’t favor passing it by only 51 votes in the Senate with a legislative maneuver. Yeah? You said that once, why are you repeating it four or five hours later? Don’t you have any other points, Mitch?

The Republicans also, repeatedly, made the point that “the American people want us to start over with a new bill”. Senator John McCain really liked this idea. What’s the problem? The Republicans know that the Dems can’t start over, because that would give the Republicans virtual veto power in the Senate, since the Dems don’t have enough votes now to stop a filibuster. It is like saying, “The American people want you to give up on this and give all of the power to decide what’s in the final bill to us”. They came to the peace  conference, but only to discuss terms of surrender and they repeated their demand, over and over.

What was needed was for one side or another, preferably the White House, to lead the other side into a box canyon from which they could not escape. President Obama seemed to know from the start that he wasn’t going to be able to do this, that the grand summit meeting would wind up being so much kabuki theater and, as far as I could tell, he never really tried to box-in his opposition. He should get the dis-credit for calling this farce in the first place and allowing it to devolve, without protest, into a pile of left over noodles.

Which brings up another point: where is this guy’s backbone? Where is his sense of outrage? Where was Obama, even once, calling down the pip squeak House members who dared to lecture the president of the United States? “How dare you come into this office and bark at me like some little junkyard dog“, to quote a movie line, “I am the president of the United States!” He didn’t have to be that tough on them, but a few well placed words at the right moment would have caused certain House members to shrink in their seats like George Costanza’s you know what in cold water.  It would have been fun to watch and it would have been replayed hundreds of times. Darn! Can’t this president even have a little fun?

I guess not. So, we had more theater and no solutions. It was, actually, just people making their points for the television cameras and past the people in the room. What a frigging waste. No wonder “the American public” is disgusted with Washington, with Congress, with government, with the whole damn lot of them, top to bottom. People out in the country have to get things done to keep their jobs. Here in Washington, they just have to go through the motions and then bray like sick burros over how bad the other party is.

Doug Terry, 2.26.10

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