Unforeseen Delays: White House plays outside game, as inside game stalls

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: Tommy Thompson, Mark McClellan, Mike Bloomberg, Bill Frist (perhaps), and lots of doctors like it. That plus 60 Senate votes equals a health care bill.

At critical times in the health care debate, when the prospects looked bleak and the process looked stalled, the only thing that’s kept things moving has been the illusion of momentum.

The latest White House effort to round up support from former GOP officials falls into that category. (Does anyone think senators started listening to Frist after he left the Senate? Is this supposed to make up for the fact that another week is racing by without a bill out of the Finance Committee?)

Highlighting support for the health care bill (even before there’s a bill) seems much more about defining the terms of bipartisanship than actually impacting the vote totals. Support for doctors from 50 states — that’s all well and good. But wouldn’t the White House rather have the votes of their senators?

(And on Afghanistan — a meeting at the White House today with congressional leaders from both parties may provide a bit more bipartisanship than the president wants at this stage of the debate.)

On health care — the new, new, new effort: “Opening a new front in the effort to promote its plans for an overhaul of the nation’s health care system, the Obama administration is courting support from Republicans and independents some distance from Capitol Hill, and aggressively publicizing the results,” David M. Herszenhorn and Carl Hulse report in The New York Times.

“The effort by the White House to win high-visibility support away from Congress is similar to one that was undertaken during debate on the administration’s economic stimulus package. When Republican lawmakers overwhelmingly opposed that initiative, the White House reached out to Republican governors, many of whom voiced support,” they write.

As for shots at real momentum — what does it say that the Congressional Budget Office is still checking its own math here?

“Senators learned Monday that a committee vote on health-care reform will be pushed back to later this week, and perhaps into next week, as they await an estimate on how much the overhaul would cost,” The Washington Post’s Shailagh Murray and Scott Wilson report. “But if the news of the delayed vote disappointed them, Democratic leaders in the Senate took heart from pro-reform statements from some high-profile Republicans, including former Senate majority leader Bill Frist and former health and human services secretary Tommy G. Thompson.”

“Nobody has more credibility with the American people on this issue than you do,” Obama told doctors Monday, per ABC’s David Wright.

“The president didn’t address the question of whether he will push for the creation of a public plan,” the Los Angeles Times’ Christi Parsons reports. “Popular support becomes more important for the president and his allies every day.”

Regarding Frist — maybe not so fast: “People try to put words in my mouth saying ‘You support the Baucus bill.’ I don’t support the Baucus bill as written today,” Frist, R-Tenn., told ABC News Radio’s Aaron Katersky. “We will see a health care bill. There are five bills out there. I’m pushing the process; it’s not where I want it to be.”

Speaking to the left — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on “Charlie Rose”: “The legislative process is such that you take it one step at a time and you build strength along the way. And I believe that we will have a very strong hand going into the conference with the public option.”

(New timeline: “If you promise not to tell anyone — I would like to see us have this as a Thanksgiving present for the American people. But it will certainly be this year,” Pelosi said.)

Why Pelosi is speaking to her own caucus, too: “Some House Democrats have started to ask themselves whether all of the work crafting a House bill will even make a difference in the end, or whether they’ll simply get steamrolled by a White House so eager for a compromise that the president will just use the Senate bill as the template,” per Politico’s Patrick O’Connor.

Snowe watch: “If [Sen. Olympia] Snowe votes against a bill she helped craft in the bipartisan gang of six Finance Senators’ talks, liberal Democrats may take that as a sign that negotiating for her vote could constitute a bridge too far. If she votes for it, she may send a signal that she’s too easy and tempt Democrats to push her limits on a public insurance option,” Roll Call’s Emily Pierce writes.

Wyden watch: “He’s the biggest wild card of all,” The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn reports on Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. “The White House is heavily engaged here, as it is with other wavering votes:. Over the last week, several members of the administration have lobbied Wyden personally. But, as of the weekend, he hadn’t clearly signaled his intentions in one way or the other.”

Coming out of Monday’s doctors’ event at the White House, the DNC’s Organizing for America arm is putting medical professionals to use in its new ad, a two-week national cable buy. “Tell Congress to pass health insurance reform now,” a doctor says in the ad. “We simply can’t afford to wait,” says a nurse.

From the DNC Tuesday: “In addition to this national television ad, OFA’s campaign also includes online advertisements, the placement of op-eds and letters to the editor from medical professionals in support of reform and the use of social networking sites by doctors and nurses. In addition, Organizing for America volunteers across the country have planned or participated in dozens of events from coast to coast with health care professionals, members of Congress and other health insurance reform advocates to discuss the urgent need for reforming America’s health insurance system this year.”

The president’s Tuesday: At 2:30 pm ET, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden discuss Afghanistan and Pakistan with congressional leaders and top committee members of both parties — about 30 members total — in the State Dining Room.

“What he’s likely to hear from the members of Congress is a debate mirroring the debate inside his administration,” ABC’s George Stephanopoulos reported on “Good Morning America” Tuesday, with Pelosi backing Vice President Joe Biden’s plan.

“Administration officials tell me to expect a decision from the president somewhere in that late October, early November timeframe,” Stephanopoulos added.

Been awhile: “It is the first time in six months that House Republican leaders have been invited to the White House to discuss official business; Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) are both scheduled to attend,” Mike Soraghan, Molly Hooper and Sam Youngman report for The Hill.

While we reminisce … “They chanted antiwar slogans, acted out waterboarding and pretended to die on the sidewalk. Those who refused orders to leave the area — including ubiquitous activist Cindy Sheehan — were arrested,” Dana Milbank writes in his Washington Post column. “But the remarkable thing about this familiar antiwar demonstration is that it occurred Monday, and the target was not George W. Bush but the White House’s current occupant. Protesters’ signs carried Obama-specific barbs: ‘Change? What Change?’ ‘The Audacity of War Crimes.’ ‘Yes We Can: U.S. Out of Afghanistan.’ ”

Before that, at 11:40 am ET, the president speaks at the National Counterterrorism Center.

The big picture: “President Obama will make his first visit to the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean on Tuesday morning, telling intelligence officials that their recent successes have proved how effectively multiple agencies can perform when they work in concert,” Anne E. Kornblut reports in The Washington Post. “The White House has been charting a delicate course as it attempts to turn the page on Bush-era anti-terrorism policies. Even as Obama wages a war in Afghanistan that he has called critical to curbing terrorism, his administration is trying to defend itself from criticism by former vice president Richard B. Cheney and other Republicans for casting aside what they say are critical tools for protecting the United States.”

Under one roof: “President Barack Obama’s top defense and diplomacy advisers said the United States retains the Afghanistan war goal that he outlined just two months into his presidency — to sideline al-Qaida — but changing circumstances require a reassessment of how to get there,” per the AP’s Anne Gearan.

“A ‘snap decision’ on whether to add more U.S troops would be counterproductive, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday. . . . ‘It’s important that at the end of the day that the president makes a decision that he believes in,’ Clinton added.”

A hint from Robert Gates? “Because of our inability and the inability, frankly, of our allies, to put enough troops into Afghanistan, the Taliban do have the momentum right now,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, in the interview scheduled to be broadcast Tuesday.

Maybe a few weeks late for this? “Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Monday called on the U.S. government’s civilian and military leadership to keep their advice to President Barack Obama on Afghanistan private amid an increasingly public debate over a White House review of war strategy,” The Wall Street Journal’s Peter Spiegel and Anand Gopal report. “The comments come just days after the U.S.’s top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, made a public appearance in London in which he said he was opposed to narrowing the military’s strategy to focus on unmanned drones and elite forces to target al Qaeda.”

Gates was asked at the evening forum with Clinton whether his suggestion that presidential advisers offer suggestions “candidly, but privately” was aimed at McChrystal: “Absolutely not,” he said, adding that McChrystal is exactly the right person for the job, per ABC’s Luis Martinez.

Boxed in by the calendar? “This is where the question of, ‘Has [the president] adopted too big of an agenda,’ may really play, and it’s just been hard to preserve some thinking space for him,” Michael O’Hanlon of Brookings said Monday on ABCNews.com’s “Top Line.” “Now he deserves a little bit of that space, but you could argue that he’s a month and a half — a little, you know, late to the game, and he really should have been obsessing about this issue through August. The fact that he wasn’t I think was at least a tactical mistake by the White House.”

Job one: “The big question on the domestic front right now is whether President Obama understands the gravity of the employment crisis facing the country. Does he get it? The signals coming out of the White House have not been encouraging,” Bob Herbert reports in The New York Times. “We seem to be waiting for some mythical rebound to come rolling in, magically equipped with robust job creation, a long-term bull market and paradise regained for consumers. It ain’t happening.”

Setting a precedent for Wall Street? “The Obama administration’s pay czar is planning to clamp down on compensation at firms receiving large sums of government aid by cutting annual cash salaries for many of the top employees under his authority, according to people familiar with the matter,” The Wall Street Journal’s Deborah Solomon reports. “Instead of awarding large cash salaries, Kenneth Feinberg is planning to shift a chunk of an employee’s annual salary into stock that cannot be accessed for several years.”

While the worst may not be all that much behind us: “With unemployment expected to rise well into next year even as the economy slowly recovers, the Obama administration and Democratic leaders in Congress are discussing extending several safety net programs as well as proposing new tax incentives for businesses to renew hiring,” Jackie Calmes reports in The New York Times. “But officials emphasized that a decision was still far off, and that in any event the effort would not add up to a second economic stimulus package, only an extension of the first.”

“President Barack Obama is considering a mix of spending programs and tax cuts to respond to widening job losses that would amount to an additional economic stimulus without carrying that label,” Bloomberg’s Mike Dorning and Nicholas Johnston report.

Just don’t call it a “stimulus”  — or, do: “If there was to be another round of stimulus, additional infrastructure would be at the top of the list,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Splintering over climate change, continued: “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest business trade association, has suffered the defection of five of its members, including Apple Inc. and Nike Inc., over its hard-line opposition to pending climate change legislation,” Amanda DeBard writes in the Washington Times. “The resignations, submitted in just the past two weeks, have shined a spotlight on the deep divisions in industry over how to deal with the issue of climate change.”

At SCOTUS, a debut: “New Justice Sonia Sotomayor, hearing cases Monday on the first day of the 2009-10 term, showed she can match the most relentless of the justices in challenging lawyers who make their cases in the well of the courtroom,” USA Today’s Joan Biskupic reports. “During arguments on criminal law and civil procedure disputes, she jumped in with the vigor of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia.”

ABC’s Terry Moran: “So while there is a great deal of speculation about the Court’s membership (it was ever thus), the justices set out today on a term that promises some important rulings on free speech, church-state relations, business regulation, and national-security law. And they go at it with gusto; it’s a “hot bench,” as lawyers sometimes say. That means that the opposing counsel who argue the case get peppered with questions, and can hardly catch their breath up there.”

GOP hopes rebound, in New Hampshire: “Former New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte (R) leads Rep. Paul Hodes (D) by seven points, according to a new survey, giving the GOP hope of holding on to a seat it once openly worried about losing,” The Hill’s Reid Wilson reports. “Ayotte is the choice of 40 percent of voters in the University of New Hampshire’s Granite Poll, sponsored by WMUR-TV, while 33 percent pick Hodes.”

More Rangel woes: “The outcome of a legislative tussle over rum taxes between Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands remains in doubt, but there is already one clear winner — the House’s top tax writer, Rep. Charles B. Rangel, a New York Democrat who is pocketing campaign cash from both territories,” S.A. Miller reports in the Washington Times.

In Virginia Tuesday: “Tonight at 7 p.m., ABC 7 will air ‘Battleground Virginia,’ a primetime Gubernatorial Special with Democrat Creigh Deeds and Republican Bob McDonnell. The special is the result of a unique multi-platform partnership with ABC 7/WJLA-TV, POLITICO, YouTube and Google.”

From a statement out late Monday: “General [David] Petraeus was diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer in February. He went through two months of radiation treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center that had minimal impact on his work schedule as he was spending 4-5 days a week in Washington, D.C. for various policy reviews and other Penta gon activities at that time.  He did at least one overseas trip during the period of the treatment, and he was able to maintain his physical training regime throughout the period as well. The treatment is assessed to have been successful.

“President Obama, Vice President Biden, Secretary of Defense Gates, Secretary of State Clinton, ADM Mullen, and others were fully informed of the initial diagnosis and treatment. GEN Petraeus kept the information close-hold because he and his family regarded his situation as a personal matter and because it did not interfere with the performance of his duties.”

The Kicker:
 
“I don’t want to interrupt, but … ” — Justice Sonia Sotomayor, interrupting.

“Levi! How’s the baby?” — Off-camera voice, to almost-Palin-family-member Levi Johnston, in a new ad for pistachios.

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