Obama quietly tries to shore up Senate support for public option

By GottaLaff

I was a little surprised to read that President Obama was this busy pushing for a public option. I have to say, it was a pleasant surprise:

Despite months of outward ambivalence about creating a government health insurance plan, the Obama White House has launched a behind-the-scenes campaign to get divided Senate Democrats to take up some version of the idea for a final vote in the coming weeks.

President Obama has cited a preference for the so-called public option. But faced with intense criticism over the summer, he strategically expressed openness to health cooperatives and other ways to offer consumers potentially more affordable alternatives to private health plans.

See? That's why this came as a surprise. But I hope the public option he's pushing for is the same one we're pushing for.

In the last week, however, senior administration officials have been holding private meetings almost daily at the Capitol with senior Democratic staff to discuss ways to include a version of the public plan in the healthcare bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) plans to bring to the Senate floor this month, according to senior Democratic congressional aides.

Among those regularly in the meetings are Obama's top healthcare advisor, Nancy-Ann DeParle; aides to Reid; and staff from the Senate Finance and Health committees, both of which developed healthcare bills.

Daily meetings. Not weekly... daily. I am expressing my appreciation, right here, right now.

Obama has also been reaching out personally to rank-and-file Senate Democrats, telephoning more than a dozen in the last week to press for action.

The White House initiative, unfolding largely out of public view, follows months in which the president appeared to defer to senior lawmakers on Capitol Hill as they labored to put together gargantuan healthcare bills.

It also marks a crucial test of Obama's command of the inside game in Washington in which deals are struck behind closed doors and wavering lawmakers are cajoled and pressured into supporting major legislation.

The challenge is to go to the Senate floor and hold the deal, said Steve Elmendorf, a lobbyist who served as chief of staff to former House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt. "They are more involved than people think," he said. "They have a plan and a strategy, and they know what they want to get, and they work with people to get it."

But what exactly are they pushing for? A strong public option? A shriveled little puny one?

[...] Obama is lavishing attention on moderate lawmakers while he continues to talk up the public option. [...]

The White House remains sensitive about being viewed as dictating what lawmakers should do.

Last week, DeParle and National Economic Council Director Larry Summers told a group of House Democratic leaders that the president is still open-minded about options, according to one Democratic aide.

"You get a lot of resentment when the White House comes in to do Congress' job," said Dan Meyer, a lobbyist who served as President George W. Bush's last legislative affairs chief and was a longtime senior aide to House GOP leaders.

So what do you think? Cautious optimism, or healthy skepticism? So many questions, so little time...