McCain v Obama: Tensions from Election ’08 Boil Over at Bipartisan Health Care Summit

Barack Obama accused someone of being stuck in campaign mode?

And of course Obama didn’t address or answer a single point or question McCain presented.

I can relate to McCain’s torture. Everytime I have to see or hear him speak, I’m tortured!

Need to get more repub’s out of office if we expect anything to get accomplished.

fox news is considered comedy, not news.

How can Obama not understand that a process in which people were bribed to support a bill using sleazy deal making would not be a concern to average Americans?

How can Obama not understand that a process in which people were bribed to support a bill using sleazy deal making would not be a concern to average Americans?
Posted by: wow | Feb 25, 2010 1:45:16 PM
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Cutting deals to pass legislation has been absolutely commonplace for years.
Which ‘bribes’ exactly are you talking about?

Now the president would like to forget his campaign promises because the election is over ( and like to rub it in) those promises dont matter? buy insulting McCain, is he really showing good will? McCain was setting up his point: the president’s proposal was cooked behind closed doors and needs to be trashed and start over with common objectives and inclusive ideas w/o special deals for anyone!!!

Those of you saying Obama is for special interests, why does not your senators call his bluff? Give specific examples, dont hand wave…call him out. You have the opportunity. Which ohter president allowed this kind of opne debate? None!! Call your senators to tell them to use the opportunity…and not be cry babies. If you make good arguments, people will get it. But saying now because your party lost…..that is childish.

McCain seems to be losing his grip on reality not only on HCR, but in recent days his complete revisionist account of his Fall 08′ campaign history.

People are we watching the same news?
Obama lies to our face all the time. He has been caught in many already. McCain was saying hey remember when you promised to make a POSITIVE change? But so far its been negative. And don’t ya’ll just love how Obama advoids answering questions by being a smart-A to the McCain- “the campiegn is over” like McCain didn’t already know. McCain was just throwing in his two cents like everyone else in the meeting. Obama thinks he has everyone fooled. He NEVER answers the question he is asked. He always lies to make it sound nice. Like the acron thing. He told us straight to our faces that he has nothing to do with acron, he hadn’t talked to them in 13years. LIE LIE LIE!!!! he was caught on camera talking about how Acorn gets first say in what he does. he even told Acron dont call me I’ll call you. OBAMA IS A LIAR LIAR LIAR

BO the liar and a deceiver. he knows Republicans will go easy on him because he is the President and can not look like angry old man confronting the president on national TV. The truth is that eventhough I need healthcare reform, I dont want the government to give it away to a buch of lunatic hippies, who dont want to work to afford the goods things in life. about 15 mil are young people who do not buy insu because they dont want to pay for it. another 15 mil are illegals and the 10mil are poor old and children. lets focus on them!! tort reform and free market

McCain was saying hey remember when you promised to make a POSITIVE change?
Posted by: Sara
old cliche but true enough…takes two to tango
re: I dont want the government to give it away to a buch of lunatic hippies,
Posted by: nels
‘lunatic hippies” ?
what’s next … the ‘Beat generationers’
..’Beatniks’,.. ‘hipsters’.. ‘folkies’… ‘Lindy hoppers’

How many of you believe that your kids and grand kids will have the freedoms that we had in the past? If the president insists on pushing Teddy’s dream through, why didn’t he do it in chicago first. Why are the big unions exempt, why did he, say he wouldnt, but in fact did turn down public funding for his president’s campain funding? Do you think that he has taken this difficult road just because its something he believes in? He is a grand politician, he’s good at it. Have you ever known a lawyer that wasn’t crooked? Do you think this health bill is for us. He OWES somebody, and we gotta pay.

“They want a uniform treatment of all Americans.” He suggested “the special deals for the special interests and favored few” should be removed from the bill.” – John McCain
Good point John. It’ll help move things forward if the special unjustified deals are removed from the Bill.
What say you Mr. President?
“So my hope would be we actually focus on the issues of how we actually get a bill done.” – President Obama
Gee that was what John McCain was trying to do.
Why on Earth would Obama bring up the Campaign then?
Maybe he was trying to avoid the issue and not address McCain’s concern?

More Political Theater.. and it’s not even very good.

It hardly seems fair.. but Obama and the Democrats are going to take the full brunt of this mess.. McCain said he wanted reform also.. but it wasn’t true.. Obama and his party are probably being hoisted on a bipartisan petard..

If you pretend that Obama has any real idea of the nature of the problem or any idea of how to solve it, you live in a Dream World. He is a sham, a small time scammer from the Chicago thuggery.

“He suggested “the special deals for the special interests and favored few” should be removed from the bill.”
How hypocritical can you get? If the GOP allowed an up or down vote then idiots like Lieberman, Landreiu, and Nelson wouldn’t have been able to extort any of that pork in the first place. And don’t tell me you disagree with your GOP collegues who are attempting to extort their own pork by filibustering nominations, John, because there’s no evidence whatsoever that you have even complained about it.

Obama showed himself to be the thin-skinned,
Posted by: moderate
actually I think the Pres showed an amazing amount of patience and self control while listening to both sides and especially some of the Republicans

you stick your fat belly
Posted by: klsdjfalkjfdsj
are we talking about the same Pres,..
Obama may be a lot of things to different people, but he certainly does not have a weight problem
Posted by: XXX | Feb 25, 2010 5:47:58 PM
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XXX, The fat belly is his $1 trillion that he is spending for your great great great great great daughter. But, of course, why would you care since you are long gone.

Man, I like Mr. Obama less and less.
Posted by: young_voter | Feb 25, 2010 6:51:19 PM
Well, I can even that out as I like him more and more.
He listened politely for hours, exhibiting his knowledge on the topic and set the stage for moving ahead without the Republicans.
He gave it a shot– and the Republicans didn’t move.
Sure,the President showed occasional flashes of temper– but my lord, who wouldn’t. They peddled the same bundle of lies they’ve been peddling, though a couple of them came across more serious-minded. (Coburn, who knew??? I know he’s a doctor and friend of Obama’s but I’ve never seen him put the political gameplaying aside and sound so reasonable.)
McCain needs to get over it and move on. His hypocritical self-righteousness gets old. As Salon points out:
“As it happens, in order to attend the healthcare summit, McCain had to cancel his other plans for today — a fundraiser sponsored by BGR PAC, the political action committee run by the lobbying firm Barbour, Griffith and Rogers. And (maybe you can guess where this is going?) in 2006, the last year for which ####.com lists records, PhRMA paid the lobbying firm $200,000.”
I wasn’t thrilled about the Pharma deal, to say the least about it, but its hard to take someone with a plank in their own eye– and a sour uneven temper– very seriously.

“So my hope would be we actually focus on the issues of how we actually get a bill done.”
ROFL
Obama doesn’t have any more interest now in getting a bill done than he did as a state or US Senator.

moderate wrote: “Wow, the prez was really irritated with McCain and it showed through. “The campaign is over”– you could hear the unspoken “I won” hanging in the air.”
.
oBama couldn’t help but let his arrogant side show with his response back to McCain. This is the most petulant little person I think has ever set foot in the White House.
.
“It was silly to snarl at McCain at that point– it is bound to make the evening news and the endless dissection on the cable outlets tonight.”
.
oBama is covered with the evening news reporting… why just look at how Jake Tapper reported this exchange. If you watched it in person you see the smarmy little oBama acting like “how dare you speak to me like that”. All Jake reports is that there was a “tense” exchange. oBama came across as a little punk. This is a leader????? what a disgrace.

This is a leader?????
Posted by: gk | Feb 25, 2010 8:55:24 PM
Absolutely. The disgrace was the Republican performance and attitude in general with a couple of surprising exceptions.
I think Ezra Klein gets this right:
The big story out of the summit is …. The Democrats are not taking reconciliation off the table, they are not paring back the bill, and they are not extricating themselves from the issue. They think they’re right on this one, and they’re going to try and pass this legislation.
Today was a boost for that effort… I imagine that this will be the last bipartisan summit we see for awhile. The format is simply too kind to the president, and he takes advantage of it ruthlessly. When the camera panned, you could almost see Republicans wondering why they’d accepted the invitation.
The people who came off best were those who knew the most about the issue. Paul Ryan and Tom Coburn on the Republican side. Durbin and Dodd for the Democrats. But above all of them, the president, who got to enter, adjudicate and conclude discussions at will — not to mention say when others didn’t know that much about the issue, or weren’t offering comments in good faith.” (WaPo)
I’m glad the President called out those who didn’t know what they were talking about and/or were being wholly disingenuous.

Barbara, when you write, “McCain needs to get over it. He lost, thank God and he can’t except it. That’s all this is about. He is not interested in bi-partisan,” I must respectfully disagree. McCain is painfully aware that he lost the presidential election and accepts it just fine. He has thrown himself into his work in the Senate with abandon. In his speech, he did point out that candidate Obama made promises president Obama wasn’t keeping, but then he focused on the terrible deals that were put into the senate bill to garner votes. He had a valid point. The president certainly makes reference to his prior experience (such as it is), saying things about when he was a senator, when he was a young father, etc. McCain does the same thing. What’s the problem?
McCain does not seem nearly as bitter about losing the biggest election of his life as some others– such as Kerry. He laughed at the president’s shot about “the election’s over” and made a joke about “I am reminded of that every day” with a smile on his face.

Various others chime in:
CNN’s David Gergen:
The folks in the White House just must be kicking themselves right now. They thought that coming out of Baltimore when the President went in and was mesmerizing and commanding in front of the House Republicans that he could do that again here today. That would revive health care and would change the public opinion about their health care bill and they can go on to victory. Just the opposite has happened
CNN’s Gloria Borger:
The Republicans have been very effective today. They really did come to play. They were very smart.
They took on the substance of a very complex issue. … But they really stuck to the substance of this issue and tried to get to the heart of it and I think did a very good job.
They came in with a plan. They mapped it out.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer:
It looks like the Republicans certainly showed up ready to play.
The Hill’s A.B. Stoddard:
I think we need to start out by acknowledging Republicans brought their ‘A Team.’ They had doctors knowledgeable about the system, they brought substance to the table, and they, I thought, expressed interest in the reform. I thought in the lecture from Senator John McCain and on the issue of transparency, I thought today the Democrats were pretty much on their knees.

“McCain is a hotheaded little jerk. Sure, he has a compelling story and I like his daughter– but he’s a jerk.” – progressive mama
No evidence of progressive thinking here.
Move on folks – nothing to see here – keep it moving.

Posted by: jennifert7 | Feb 25, 2010 10:49:21 PM
To each their own. It would never occur to me to quote the people on CNN. Lol. Not very fresh thinking at CNN, imho, but, again, to each their own.
One of my favorite quotes about events came from Andrew Sullivan of Atlantic Monthly (Daily Dish blog):
“Yes, he [Paul Ryan] voted for the Medicare Prescription Drug Act when Bush was president, the most fiscally irresponsible measure in decades. Today, he railed against it, without holding himself accountable.
This is what drives me nuts about today’s Republicans. They are like Eliot Spitzer railing against Obama for not cracking down on prostitution.”

So was it disrespectful of President Obama to repeatedly refer to Senator McCain as “John”. I’m not a huge McCain fan, but it seemed like an attempt to diminish him. McCain’s reply was cute, but let’s imagine this exchange instead…
“Let me just make this point, John, because we’re not campaigning anymore,”
Then with a smile, “Thank you Barack, I’m aware of that.”
The liberals would have gone NUTS. “How dare he disrespect the President!”, etc.

XXX, instead of focussing on R vs D, I think it’s more constructive to focus on conservatives vs progressives. Conservatives believe in smaller government, less spending, lower taxes, personal responsibility, and a strong national defense. Progressive want the opposite of that.
Today, the D’s in congress are mostly progressives. Unfortunately about half the R’s are also, and those are the R’s you are really complaining about. It’s also the trigger for the recent rebirth of fiscal conservatism.

. “How dare he disrespect the President!”, etc.
Posted by: Open-Mind |
in your imaginary setting, one might have to also imagine that during a presidential address to congress, a republican would shout out:
‘you lie’..
re: conservatives vs progressives:
Conservatives believe in smaller government, less spending, lower taxes, personal responsibility, and a strong national defense. Progressive want the opposite of that.
to state that ‘Progressives’ don’t want a strong national defense is a canard. There is a great debate about what is necessary, and how to form policy to insure national defense, but to imply that ‘progressives’ want the opposite of a strong national defense is at best a lame ‘talking point’.
As I mentioned, call ‘them’ Republicans or Conservatives, ‘they’ do not initiate ‘smaller government’, With ‘less spending, lower taxes’, these are wonderful folksy sayings but what do they really mean? Less spending on what?
re: personal responsibility
you’ll have to elaborate your view of what that means.

How come everyone is bickering on this site about who sounds like an idiot? Or who snapped at who?
Seems to me the bill writers got what they wanted. Everyone is discussing the attitudes of these two, but no one is discussing the points McCain brought up.
Why is Florida getting more money for seniors than other states? There are seniors in every single state, and they should get the same treatment as Florida seniors. And why is a hospital being built in CT, but not in other states that may need hospitals? These special clauses are of great concern in my opinion, but they weren’t even discussed. Instead the President goes on the defensive like a little kid and says “The election is over, John”. Way to ignore the actual issue at hand. The President loses my respect a little bit more each day he is in office.

XXX, you keep interchanging conservative and republican as if they are the same thing, but they are not. R and D are political parties. Parties care about getting their party reelected and maintaining its power base. C and P describe a spectrum of ideologies which have already been described here. Clearly, most people will not believe in ALL the ideals of their favorite ideology. For example, a person might be believe in gay marriage, but be a traditional conservative in all other respects. My point was … it is the fiscal policies of the progressive ideology which have gradually brought the USA to its knees over the last 100 years, and now things are declining faster.
Example. $5T debt when Bush (fiscal progessive) started. About $10T when Obama (super progressive) was elected. About $14T by the end of this year. Our out-of-control plane is accelerating towards the ground because its progressive engines are now running at full-throttle.

Posted by: XXX|
“How dare he disrespect the President!”, etc. in your imaginary setting, one might have to also imagine that during a presidential address to congress, a republican would shout out:
‘you lie’..
——–
Not sure what Joe Wilson’s outburst has to do with my question. Maybe you’re just dodging it because you don’t like the answer.
Otherwise it sounds like you’re equating Joe Wilson’s outburst with Obama’s disrespectful treatment of McCain yesterday. I recall that Wilson apologized profusely, was condemned by both parties, and was pretty well thrashed by the media for a couple weeks.
Obama? Not so much.

“one might have to also imagine that during a presidential address to congress, a republican would shout out:
‘you lie’..”
.
Hard to imagine that a president would stand there and blatantly lie to congress. As the bamster said himself “we’re gonna call you out”. Well, he got a taste of his own medicine.