It attempted to be not a description of the ideal, but rather one of the doable. As one senior White House official put it a few hours before the speech: “There is a path to get this done. … The issues that separate us are not insuperable.”
From our colleague Sophia Yan, who has been bird-dogging this on Capitol Hill:
As Michael notes, the President’s speech begins with a tribute to John Dingell Sr., a New Deal Congressman who was fighting for universal coverage 65 years ago, and whose son carries on the fight. Here’s a story I wrote on the father and the son, all the way back in the pre-internet-link days of 1993:
The White House has just put out a list of who will be sitting in the best seats in the House (Chamber) tonight. There are a few famous faces (Vicki Kennedy’s appearance will be especially poignant), and some others whose names and stories you probably don’t know, but should:
First off, let me disclose a bias: I like Smokey the Bear. When I was a kid, I thought he was a real bear, because some California television station showed a partially charred bear cub who had survived a forest fire. I always thought he did good work. He prevented forest fires. (This video, for [...]
