The signals are growing louder that the Obama White House is readying its own health care plan in advance of next week’s summit. Press secretary Robert Gibbs fueled the speculation in his briefing yesterday. Asked about the possibility, Gibbs replied: “Stay tuned.”

If so, it would be a sharp break from the strategy that the White House has followed thus far, which is to let Congress work out the details of the legislation. As Steven Pearlstein (one of President Obama’s favorite columnists) pointed out in this morning’s Washington Post, that has been part of the problem:

Over the past year, Obama’s singular mistake was to think he could rely on the Democratic leadership and a Democratic majority in Congress to deliver on his electoral mandate. Caught in crossfire between the House and Senate, liberals and centrists, Democratic special interests and independent voters, he wound up raising too much doubt about his most fundamental promise — to change the way business is done in Washington. Worse still, he wound up convincing members of Congress that he needed them more than they needed him.

It should be obvious now that the president cannot leave it to Congress to sort things out.