The big story today in Washington, D.C. will be the White House Health Care Summit, as President Obama and his top lieutenants will sit down with 39 lamwakers from Congress to try to hash out something on health reform legislation.

It was an odd day before the Summit, as the White House held no press briefing - where Press Secretary Robert Gibbs could certainly have fielded questions about the gathering - and details about the six hour(!) meeting still hadn't been released to the press late Wednesday night.

Put yourself in the shoes of the people who call the shots at CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and CNBC - how much air time do you eat up with this thing on Thursday?

Oh yeah, you show the start, and you show the President, but do you really stick with it for a long time and eat up commercials along the way?  (Wouldn't a live car chase in Los Angeles be better?)

For those of you who want to watch on C-SPAN - so you don't have to listen to the mindless babble of TV anchors - you better have C-SPAN3, because channels 1 and 2 will be occupied by the usual broadcast of proceedings in the House and Senate.

In other words, if you want to watch it wall-to-wall, your best bet might be over the internet.

Finally, what will this produce?  Just more finger pointing seems to be Washington Consensus, maybe something along the lines of:

The Democrats will emerge and say that they've been super nice to the Republicans and given them umpteen chances to put forward their plans, but those GOP'ers are just the Party of No.

The Republicans will emerge to say that the Democrats weren't serious about cutting a deal, and that they are all Big Government Socialists who want your kids to read Chairman Mao's Little Red Book.

You get my drift.

In the end, it probably won't matter what happens, as the Democrats seem ready to try to jam a health care bill through, partly using the budget reconciliation process.

Can they do it?  Sure they can.  They can probably get a bill through that is focused only on tax and spending changes related to the health care bill in the Senate.

But getting something through the House?  That promises to be much more difficult.

For Republicans, the continued focus on this issue may be a great gift - because it keeps voters focused on health care reform, which obviously is an issue that could translate into big GOP gains this election year.

 

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