necessarily get -- we know we can't get the insurance reforms and know we can't get a full exchange for people to buy low-cost zmurns. i'm not sure we can get a public option under reconciliation. >> the question begs, our on the senate finance committee with baucus, chuck grassley. do you really think chuck grassley wants to reel in the insurance companies and stop gouging the american people? do you believe those on your committee, senate finance, are genuine about this? >> ed, we'll find out tomorrow if there is agreement. i think we'll know by then. i will say two things. one, i believe there has been a good faith effort, a thoughtful effort of trying to come together. i believe, also, i also believe the majority of the republicans are in a position of just wanting to vote no. the special interest, the insurance companies, the drug companies, all the folks that

back them, they're much more interested in protecting their interests. >> senator, thanks for your time tonight. debbie stabenow from richmond. earlier in the show i asked you what's the more important thing the president can do tomorrow night? 5 2% said get tough on the republicans. 48% said get specific about the plan. that's "the ed show." we're back tomorrow night with a special show tomorrow night at 11:00 p.m. eastern. "hardball" with chris matthews is next right here on msnbc. a make-or-break week for president obama. let's play "hardball." good evening, i'm mike barnicle in tonight for chris matthews. leading off tonight, obama's big moment. president obama is facing, perhaps, the most important and consequential week yet of his presidency. it all begins with health care in his speech to a joint session of congress tomorrow night.

then there's afghanistan. the september 11th anniversary. stubbornly high unemployment and growing unease about the deficit. add to that the fence that the president is being shaped by events more than he is shaping them. whether he can turn that around may say a lot about how successful a president he will be. virtually every republican has decided to just say no to anything the president proposes. plus he's faced with this inconvenient truth. liberal democrats won't vote for a health care plan without a public option. moderate democrats won't vote for one with it. two congressional democrats who fall on either side of this issue will be here in just a moment. also, was the white house asleep at the switch when the right wing attack machine went after the president on all fronts? they translated health care reform into death panels and killing grandma and turned today's back to school speech into socialist indocket nation. the white house seems confused

by the attacks and says it's going to fight back. we'll see. speaking of death panels which don't exist, sarah palin won't stop saying they do. she just wrote that the accuracy of the term has been vindicated. it hasn't but that hasn't stopped her and we'll debate that later. finally, after serving seven years in prison, former congressman jim trafficant has managed to compare himself to, of all people, nelson mandela. that's where it belongs in the "hardball" sideshow. we begin with president obama's big moment. chuck todd is nbc news chief white house correspondent and political director. jonathan martin is politico's senior political writer. gentlemen, let's start with you, chuck. you know better than most, chuck, i've been around a long time. i've got to tell you, this furor over the president's school speech to students, the continuing jam over which democrats are with him on health care, which aren't and the continuing prognostications

about all the different polls out there, is the obama presidency at an end? what is going on here? >> reporter: well, i think, you know, i talked to one outside democratic adviser to this white house and it was put to me this way, that, look, they are aware that in many ways this fall and how -- and frankly, it starts tomorrow, that the white house and the president, himself, is taking a character and leadership test. that this is a moment in time for him to show he can take control of a debate, he can take control of his party. he can figure out a way to cut through some of the problems of sausage making inside of his own party and maybe not about figuring out how to stop polarization among the two political parties. i don't think any one person can end that, but in a minimum becoming a leader, leading his own party out of this health care jam, if you would. i don't think they would describe it as a mess, but it's

clearly a political jam. there's only one person that can lead him out of it. so i've asked some -- in many kays, if they look at tomorrow's speech as a chance to test his character and show off his character that that might be a step in the right direction in fixing this perception problem, mike, that i think you're hitting at. >> jonathan, what are you hearing in your reporting? we hear from some sources that the president is going to step up to the plate and, you know, get a little tougher than he has been in the past. he's got a problem clearly with speaker pelosi or some issue with speaker pelosi. seems to be a split with majority leader steny hoyer. what are you hearing? >> well, chuck, as usual is exactly right. the fact is this president is not going to be able to transcend the partisan divide in this country. it's apparently gotten worse. it's not gotten any better. where he can be successful is by trying to get his own party in line in finding some consensus among congressional democrats. if he can do that, that's going

to lead to a victory on health care. that gets him past his first hurdle. i talked to a lot of democrats today, mike, for a story that i'm doing. you know, they are confused themselves because of this right-wing attack machine you mentioned. the fact is if you're the president of the united states and you're in the white house, do you engage these folks to the right wing or ignore them? if you ignore them you've got the sort of death panels that start setting in. if you engage them, does that diminish your office? it's a really tough question. clearly it was a very tough summer in large part because the white house didn't know what to do with some of these forces on the right that earlier drove the conversation on health care. >> chuck, that gets to, you know, back to the school prayer thing i mentioned at the top. i found the controversy over it kind of depressing. sort of people out there having no confidence in their own parenting skills no matter what the president would say in school. it's easy to get isolated in the white house. we all know that.

yet, there are elements of that debate where the president was going to say, wash your hands, respect your teachers, do your homework, respect yourself, and for that message to be so misconstrued out there, are they aware of how incendiary this stuff is? >> well, i tell you, you know, in many ways, it's my understanding, you know, yesterday the president went to cincinnati, afl-cio picnic. everybody came away and went, whoa, where did that guy come from? all of a sudden candidate obama was standing in for president obama. he was fiery, he was -- looked in a good mood but sort of stern and seemed to just want to -- want to light the supporters, you know, on fire. get them fired up. get them behind him rallying him almost in campaign mode. i'm told in many ways because he, himself, was frustrated by

how this school speech was treated. the white house had this attitude, look, they were blowing it off. last week robert gibbs referred to it as this is the silly season trying to be dismissive of it. not any more. these guys want to engage directly now on some of this stuff. go ahead and take some of these folks on. it may be a fringe in their mind that is starting these stories but the problem they've got is when you have 20% to 25% of america, eventually that's the message they get is from that fringe. then they feel like they've got to beat this back because they can't -- they can't be having 20% to 25% of the population not getting their side of the story at all. >> jonathan, before you jump in on what chuck was just telling us, let's listen to president obama, a bit of it yesterday in cincinnati. >> and because we're so close to real reform, some in the special interest are doing what they always do which is just trying to scare the heck out of people. but i've got a question for all

these folks who say, you know, we're going to pull the plug on grandma and this is all about illegal immigrants. you've heard all the lies. i've got a question for all those folks. what are you going to do? what's your answer? what's your solution? and you know what? they don't have one. >> jonathan? your thoughts, please? >> well, i've always thought when this president gets further away from that building that chuck's standing in front of right now, he's much more effective. there's something about the marvel in washington that sort of takes the fire away from this president. once he's out there in a place like cincinnati talking to organized labor, for example, this summer when he was campaigning for jon corzine in new jersey, you saw a similar, more sort of campaign-style president. he's much more effective.

part of the challenge was he wasn't spending all summer in that public campaign mode. a lot of the negotiations were behind closed doors with the american hospital association, with members of congress. it was more of an inside game. he was not sort of doing the outside game at full force all summer long like he was there yesterday in cincinnati. look, i think the back to school episode, mike, that you mentioned and this whole van jones incident, the white house adviser that was forced out over the weekend. if those two incidents are not sort of opening the eyes of a lot of folks in this white house about the still resonant power of the right wing in this country, i don't know what's going to. >> chuck, health care tomorrow night. power of the right wing. barack obama's president of the united states. there's a certain element of power there. >> reporter: there is. i think what you're going to see tomorrow is this. if the speech is successful, mike, joe and jane in kansas city, missouri, are going to be able to tell you what president obama's health care plan is,

period. so then if that is what happens tomorrow and he successfully can do that, outline how to pay for it, outline how things should be covered, even deal with this issue of the public option, he may deal a little bit with the issue of bipartisanship, but i don't think they're going to get into political process a lot. i really think it's going to be about the specifics of what reform would look like after its implemented. trying to get folks to focus on that. i think we're starting to see, today was a lot of sausage making happening today here on capitol hill on pennsylvania avenue. behind the scenes you're starting to see what's going to happen. on this issue of public option, it's never going to die. it may not be implemented. it is now going to be -- we call it a trigger. it's actually a terrible term to try to explain. the threat of the public option on private insurance. that is a belief that centrist democrats are buying into and it may be enough to keep the left who really want a public option

to say, okay, you know, and that's where they're coming together. that looks like where everything seems to be coming together today, which by the way, the big victory for public option advocates, because you know what we're not talking about? this idea of the co-ops. remember the kent conrad idea, granted try to explain that in 30 seconds and i won't. that seems to have faded. >> yeah. try 30 days you couldn't explain it. jonathan, you agree with chuck on that? >> i was going to say chuck's points are very, very shrewd. i think politically what the trigger does, it provides cover for liberal democrats who have gone out on a limb and said, look, there's no way we can support a bill with no public option. if they contain the trigger option, those democrats, those progressives, can make the argument i'm still voting for a bill that has public option language in there. at the same time you bring home the moderate democrats in the senate from red states who are wary of a public option. >> chuck, before we go, this is a rather sensitive issue.

i wonder if there's any sense within the white house that you hear, that you pick up, that they think race might be a part of this argument against everything that the president does? >> reporter: in the- -- even on background they will never touch that. >> right. >> reporter: they don't want to go near it. they don't want to be accused of crying race. remember, it would come up in the campaign and you would have back and forth sort of accusing them. oh, look, by saying something might have to do with race, obama's playing the race card. there would be -- they're very concerned. they don't ever want -- they will never talk about it as an excuse. outside, advisers, outside advisers to this white house that's usually the quickest way they go to it. they say, if you look at these polls, it's the southern, it's mostly, you know, you look at the school speech. it was a lot of -- it was places in the south that were reactive. so you get a lot of people saying, hey, two plus two plus

two plus two eventually equals eight here and maybe it has to do with something with race. this white house doesn't want to touch that. >> right. that is both interesting and depressing, gentlemen. chuck todd, jonathan martin, thanks very much. coming up, president obama's biggest challenge tomorrow night may be getting his own party to get on the same page about health care reform. we'll talk to two house democrats. one who is demanding public option and one who's more willing to compromise. that's next. something new is happening at ethan allen! with "special savings" on select hand-made upholstery.

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welcome back to "hardball." will congress pass a health care bill that doesn't include a public option? congresswoman chellie pingree, a democrat from maine.

gerry connolly a democrat from virginia. two people on the same sides and yet maybe not on the same side so much. congresswoman pingree, let's start with you. if there is no public option included in the bill that hits the house floor at some point down the road, will you vote for it or against it? >> that would be a tough one for me. i've already said i would vote against a bill that doesn't have a public option. it's a huge issue to me in terms of really reforming health care. frankly, for my constituents, many of whom still think we should have a single payer health care plan, this is middle ground, moving to the right. they're very worried about the debate going on. i would be concerned if they don't have a public option. >> you're not going to tell me how you'd vote, yes or no, right? >> today i'd vote no. i mean, you know, you never know what the next configuration would be, but i signed on to a letter saying i wouldn't vote for a bill with a public option. i wanted to be -- without a public option. i wanted to be very clear to the president and my colleagues that

in my experiences on health care i come from maine, we've done a lot of work with insurance companies. what i hear from people is, you know, why would you want to help out the insurance companies? that's where the problem is. when people say to us, well, it won't be a level playing field if you don't -- if you put a public option in, you know, i have to say, i didn't get elected to make sure insurance companies made huge profits. the ceos got big salaries. i'm here to make sure we have an equitable plan to the people can afford their health care and we really expand it and have major reform. for me right now that is essential. >> congressman connolly, public option doesn't hit your hot button in terms of final version of the bill, does it? >> well, it's not so much that. i support a public option. i've endorsed a public option. it's not a matter of theology to me. i want to get on a path to yes for health care reform legislation. i'm not there yet. i have other problems with the bill. a public option, if it is an instrument that can broaden access and bring down insurance

coverage, in particular, by providing competition, i'm all for it. if there's another way of doing the same thing, i'm for that, too. i'm unwilling to draw a bright line in the sand over that particular aspect of health care reform. >> you said you had other problems with the bill as it's being drafted right now. what are those other problems? >> there are a lot of discreet issues we could talk about, but two big ones. i don't think we have run up enough in savings for the bill. i don't like the surcharge that's been proposed here in the house. i think it hurts lots of folks in my area of the world, northern virginia, but it also hurts small businesses. before we start talking about revenue enhancement, i want to be convinced and i think the public wants to be convinced we've done everything we can. left no rock unturned in identifying -- example, the drug companies put $80 billion on the table for voluntary savings.

the insurance companies which chellie mentioned and i agree with her, the biggest profit makers in the whole system, zero dollars on the table. we can do better. >> congresswoman pingree, you heard congressman connolly saying he wants to get to yes. so tell me, given the seemingly split, some dependents say it's minor, some say it's major, between the speaker of the house nancy pelosi who's going to be speaking in a few minutes i guess, and steny hoyer, a split over public option. how do you navigate to yes if that, indeed, is your goal? is it your goal, too? >> absolutely. i think we all want to get to yes. remember, i come from the state with senator olympia snowe who is visibly working with the white house to see if there are other options in the senate. i as well as anybody understand the importance of negotiating, the importance of getting a final bill that allows us to move forward. i agree with a lot of things gerry says. we have a huge freshman class and all of us ran on this issue

of bringing about reform in the health care system. things like making sure we negotiate with the pharmaceutical manufacturers to bring down the price of prescription drugs. that's essential to lowering the cost here. i do think there's a lot of work to be done in making sure we lower costs. on the other hand, if we don't come out with a very strong bill from the house and i believe that has to have a public option, that it really has to fight back against the insurance companies that has to show massive amounts of reform, when we get to negotiating with the senate, we will already have moved too far in what will be a complicated conference process. so while everybody kind of wants to know today, declare where you are, what are you going to do here, you mentioned it earlier. this is sausage making. there's a lot of complicated maneuvering going to have to go on to get us from here to there. i think everybody knows the president wants to pass a bill. this congress wants to pass a bill. at least for me, with whatever dispute went on with our constituents this summer, the one thing i heard loud and clear was, get this fixed. work together. find a solution.

>> mike, if i could add to that, in some ways it's an academic question. i think chellie and i would agree. it's highly unlikely anything would pass the floor of the house of representatives without a strong public option. >> congressman gerry connolly. congresswoman chellie pingree. thank ryou very much for your views. jim trough cant is out of prison and has advice for all of us. that's next on "the sideshow." when you're on a diet hungry just won't quit. but you can outsmart him with weight watchers online. it's weight watchers, but it's completely online. customizable tools give you structure to make healthier choices. while restaurant guides, recipes, and mobile access give you flexibility, to live life and lose weight.

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♪ i love that music. i just love it. back to "hardball." time for "the sideshow." shout it from the mountain to be. former illinois governor rod blagojevich was on the "today" show this morning to promote his new book. "the governor."

gives us his version of the events which led his impeachment. blago's not giving an inch on those charges he tried to sell barack obama's senate seat. >> you're not this person and you believe that you want to tell the people who hired you and trusted you that you didn't let them down. you look for the highest mountaintop you find and you want to shout out, "it just ain't so." no one hears you if you're on top of the mountain. next best thing is to write a book. if what i'm saying is true, and the tapes will bear out what i say. it's the prosecution that will not allow us to have the tapes heard publicly. if what i say is true is true, somebody is lying here and it's not me. if a governor was stolen by office by false accusations knowingly given, then seriously something is upside down. that's what the story of this book is. >> i tell you what is not upside down is his hair. great hair. watch blago's turn on "hardball" this monday the 14th. speaking of trouble with the law, former congressman jim

traffican got out of the slammer last week after serving seven years on corruption charges. he gave a speech at his welcome home bash invoking who else, nelson mandela. trafficant put his own twist saying, quote, if you want to know the true nature of a country you must go through its prisons. i know america, identify seen the other side of it and i don't like it. unquote. trafficant told supporters, the government, quote, had to cheat to convict him. unquote. back in 2002. he plans further major announcements by the end of the week this week. the politico is out with its list of the top washington, d.c., area party animals. guess what? "hardball" regulars made the list. margaret carlton of "bloomberg news." "vanity fair's" chris hitchens and, of course, howard fineman of "newsweek." crazy, crazy party animals, all of them. they've got it all written all over them.

joe kennedy ii announced this weekend he will not be running for his uncle ted's senate seat in massachusetts which means no kennedys are in the mix in that special election. you could call this the end of an era. how long has massachusetts had a kennedy in congress? about 62 straight years. there was a brief blip between 1961 and 1962 when jack kennedy became president and ted kennedy won a special election to the senate, but it looks like the 62-year streak of massachusetts-based kennedys in congress has come to an end. that, 62, is tonight's "big number." up next, why is the conservative right so angry at everything president obama does, from his speech today to schoolchildren to his efforts to reform health care? the right wing attack machine is powered up against the president's every move. what the white house can do to combat it, next. is as easy as one, two, three. with covergirl trublend, if your liquid makeup is a two,

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i'm milissa rehberger. here's what's happening. a u.n.-backed election commission found convincing evidence of fraud in afghanistan's recent presidential elections. this as president hamid karzai passed the 50% threshold he needs to avoid a runoff election. the u.s. military says taliban forces killed three marines in an ambush today. part of a training team embedded with the afghan army. eight afghan soldiers also killed. sonia sotomayor took her judicial oath and joined the nation's highest oath today. "discovery" undocked from the space station. nasa's plans for another moon shot are a no go. a panel of experts concluded the effort may be too expensive.

wall street, stocks moved higher today. a weakening dollar led to a jump in oil and gold prices. cadbury chocolate rejected a takeover bid from kraft foods. back to "hardball." welcome back to "hardball." the right wing attack machine ginned up fights against president obama on every front from his efforts to overhaul health care to his work in rescuing the economy to his back to school speech, today, to students. so has the white house ignored these attacks for too long? what do they need to do at this point? to neutralize them? pat buchanan, msnbc political analyst. david corn, washington bureau chief for "mother jones." pat buchanan knew mother jones. so let's start with you, pat. >> i also was part of the right wing attack machine. >> pat, we were speaking

earlier, chuck todd was on earlier from the white house. i told him i have been amazed at the furor that has developed over president obama's speech today to students. high school and some grammar school students, basically saying do your homework, wash your hands so you don't get the flu, respect your parents, respect your teachers and respect yourself. what is going on? what is the deal here? >> well, there's nothing wrong with the speech, itself. it was a good speech to students. i'll tell you what it's all about, mike. the atmosphere and the politics in this town are thoroughly poisoned across the board right now. this was just an occasion where barack obama said he's going to talk to the students and all the sudden the students had these workbooks they were going to work on. mike, back in 1991, george bush first went out to alex deal junior high school right up the street. attacked by the "washington post" of using students as props. and turning the school into a

media studio. lamar alexander education secretary called to the hill. the gao ordered to investigate the whole thing. it's a poisoned political atmosphere. this was dropped into the middle of it. >> david, how did it get so toxic? how? >> well, i -- if you remember back to the campaign, i would go to these mccain/palin rallies. there were people there attacking barack obama, literally saying he's a communist, hangs out with terrorists, that he's not legitimate, he's not a natural-born citizen, could never become president if elected. there is the slice of the public out there, 5%, 10%, 15%, listen, they're wackos. it's that clear. they cannot stand this guy. they'll fight him on every front. these are not policy battles. you have people like sarah palin, what's she doing today? out there insisting the health care reform bill does include death panels though the aarp, the ama and expert groups that have looked at the issue say they don't include death panels.

this is irrational behavior driven by obama hatred and people who can't accept him. you have to at least question whether for some of those people, not all, but for some of them there is a racial element to it. >> look, what has happened with barack obama is he's gone from 70% to 50% in his health care proposal. it's not 15% against it. it's a majority of the country that's against it. you have tremendous numbers of people coming out. 2,500 people show up in the middle of august in reston, virginia, a laid-back community, to shout at the former chairman of the democratic party. the point is, mike, this country's very nationally polarized over health care. obama has lost the cachet that he's had. it's not simply rush limbaugh that's done that or the folks over at fox news. it is the country that's losing confidence in this guy. >> listen, the polls still show a majority believe in health care reform. that 70% or so favor a public option.

i mean, it's not as if there's a popular revolt. there are people being vocal. holding up signs accusing him of lennonism and their getting on tv and causing a great right wing -- >> that's probably because we're putting them on tv. let's talk about those death panels, for example. what sarah palin said today is exactly right. the whole health care proposal cutting costs is leading to rationed care. in the last six months of life where all the expenses are done. people are going to be told, there are procedures, there are drugs and there are surgeries which we're no longer going to give you. in cases with people with alzheimer's, these decisions are going to be made. is the phrase death panels in there? no, it's not. >> wait a minute. wait a minute. pat, david, wait a minute. wait a minute. we have an update on sarah palin. she was invited to testify before the new york state senate aging committee. she refused. instead of testifying she submitted written testimony and said, basically, that death panels would be included. she wrote, quote, a great deal

of attention was given to my use of the phrase "death panel" in discussing such rationing despite repeated attempts by many in the media to dismiss this phrase as a myth. its accuracy has been vindicated. >> all right. let me tell you exactly what she meant by these, which was in the bill and which baucus says is now adamant. if you've got, say, some cancer and it spreads, say, to the liver. in that case you get an authorized individual paid by medicare who comes to your house and gives you your options. if you are alone, one of those options, one of those resources. hold it. they have a death or dignity law or give them a pamphlet to visit those folks? >> listen, i'll give you this piece i'm holding in my hand. ap, no death panel in health care bill. the national right to life committee that you usually agree with, pat, they say there are no death panels. there's nothing mandatory. this is end of life counseling. that is only voluntary.

there's no such thing as a death panel. sarah palin is not correct. the ama, the aarp -- no one says they're there. >> pat, go ahead. >> the phrase "death panels" is not in the legislation. >> the entity is not. >> the entity, you say, is not there. an individual who is authorized and paid by medicare finds out that your cancer has spread, they're authorized to come and tell you what your options are. hold it. in a legislation which is designed to cut health care costs in the last six months of life. >> it's voluntary, pat. end of life care, you can get it. that's all it says. >> you don't ask for it. they come to the house. >> no, it's voluntary. you have to -- >> let me ask -- let me ask both of you guys this. let's get away from the specifics of what's in the bill, what's not in the bill. go to one of my cockamamy

theories. pat, you first. here's my theory. a large element of what's going on out there in the country right now has to do with the fact there's structural change being suggested. a lot of people don't like change of any kind. structural change is somewhat threatening. the threat of structural change in addition to the dialogue and rhetoric pumped out over the last several months about it has injected a large element of fear in a lot of people in this country. >> you're dead on, mike. >> fear seems to be driving the dialogue. >> mike, you are dead on. they did hear the phrase death panel. that's not in the bill. what they're hearing is obama says, you know, half of all expenses are in the last six months of life. we've got to cut those costs. $500 billion has got to be cut out of medicare. you have folks in their 70s and 80s out there and saying, what is he talking about? you hear about advisers going to come to your house voluntarily and all this. if that is what's causing the fear and apprehension and sarah

palin captured it when she used that phrase, admittedly it's not in the bill, but obama hasn't explained it and he says that part of the bill is going out. why did they run away from it if it's a good idea? >> pat, you're giving sarah palin credit for making something up that happened to hit a chord with people who were worried. that's called demagoguery. that's not something -- i mean, she's making stuff up. it can't be taken out of the bill because it was never -- >> it is in the bill. the death panels -- how can you describe it -- >> you've already conceded there's no such thing as the death panel in the bill. to mike's larger point, i think barack obama did, indeed, represent change to a lot of people. i think not just change in health care but change in the economy and financial regulation and lots of things and also i think cultural change. he represents -- he has a wider view of america, trying to make a lot of other people share.

this minority -- it is still a minority -- are responding against him in a very volatile way. they're easily whipped up by sarah palin and other conservatives. >> pat, let me ask you, if you were in the white house, as fearful a thought that that is, that would put a lot of fear into it. >> i've been in three of them, mike. >> i know that. if you were there today, how would you handle, how would you tell the president and his people to handle the threat, the rhetoric, the incendiary stuff, the polarization, the toxicity in our politics? how would you tell him to handle it? >> weshlgs i think he's gotten behind the curve. there's a lot of things that are out there. let's take this so-called advisers. he immediately said, that's going to be out of the bill and so did the finance committee. those things are going to be gone. the very fact they ran away from it i think contributed to the nervousness, the apprehensions this may be true. what i would have done early on, i think obama should have defined the bill, himself.

he's got about five of them sitting out there. there are things different in each of these things. the opponents are going after him very effectively, hammering him and he's on the defensive on all of these issues. he's gotten behind the curve completely. i would advise him to do what he's going to do wednesday night. i wonder if it's not too late to get a majority bill. >> i agree with pat buchanan. i'm waiting for the lightning bolt. but one of the -- i would add to that that, you know, when barack obama had a chance to define the health care debate and define the health care plan as his, he didn't do that. instead he allowed health care reform to become equated with congress which has approval ratings about half of his. he took the less of the popular political entity in town and said they are the guys and gals really in charge of health care, not me. i think that has hurt him from the get-go. he's the one who had the standing and popularity going

into this episode to sort of say, i have a plan, this is what i'm going to fight for. i'm going to explain it to you clearly. i'm going to push congress as best i can to deliver what i think is best. that would have been a much closer to winning strategy. he's playing catchup. >> mike, what has happened is the opponents have taken pieces of it and defined the bill for the country and the bill they've defined has been losing support steadily going down, down, down, down. >> pat buchanan, who knew mother joan, and david corn. >> i think he dated mother jones. >> thank you. up next, president obama's big speech tomorrow night. how can he unite his own party to agree on health care reform? the politics fix is coming up. ever worn your clothes in the shower? if you're using other moisturizing body washes, you might as well be. you see, their moisturizer sits on top of skin, almost as if you're wearing it. only new dove deep moisture has nutriummoisture,

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welcome back to "hardball." time for "the politics fix." david gregory, moderator of "meet the press." ron brownstein, atlantic media's political director and columnist for "national journal." david, david, david, let me ask you this. now, it's as if i've come in and landed from another planet. i'm seeing the president of the united states attacked for basically telling kids to do their homework and brush after every meal. i'm being told that tomorrow could be a break or make night for his presidency on health care. i heard harry reid, the senate majority leader this afternoon basically saying the public option, maybe it will happen and speaker pelosi standing along side of him saying, no, it has to happen. what's the deal tomorrow night? what does the president have to do?

what's he going to do? >> i think the primary thing he's got to do is get the american people on board and try to persuade them and really drum up for public support for this than exists. the problem with august is the debate got off the rails. the white house knows it. the white house understands at this point there's too few people in america who have any idea who the president wants to do about health care. he's got to change that. he's got to make it something simple her, got to be able to own it. that at its very core is what tomorrow night is about. about reaching the american people. if he can do some of that, turn that around, he can apply a little more pressure within his own party. republicans may be too far gone now. within his own party he can wield more leverage. >> how is it this most articulate of presidents, this guy who took the country by storm based largely on his ability to give a speech and communicate with the public now has this phrase "public option" out there and most people i know

think it's something like take a bus or buy a prius. public option. how did this happen? >> first of all, it's important to recognize how tangental to the overall plan the public option really is. the best estimate of the congressional budget office, david and i talked about before. only 12 million people would be million people in private insurance, 16-1. so for this to become such a litmus test for the left seems to me overstated. how did he get to this impasse? it was a fundamental contradiction between this inside strategy, mike, and his outside strategy. trying to learn from clinton in '93, he did not want to be overly prescriptive in giving congress tablets from which to legislate. he wanted to give them a lot of flexibility to find the water line in each chamber. basically so they can get the bill forward out of the senate and out of the house. the cost of that, and that worked up until august, the cost of that he did not have a specific proposal he could go to the country with and say if you vote for health care, if you support health care, will you get x, y and z.

so without that, the grassroots conservative opponents kind of filled in the blanks. even at a time when many of the big koinstitutions that fought health care reform in the past, including the ama and insurance industry, were either supporting him or largely neutral. in many ways the outside game was hurt chosen by strategy they chose with the inside game. >> using facts that 12 million people would be affected by public option by the year 2019, i think those are the numbers he used -- >> yeah. >> that practically begs the question of this white house, do they know what they're doing? >> well, i think the difficulty is that -- i talked to an astute republican today who made the point, this is like social security in this regard -- there are so many moving pieces to it that you're trying to sell at all one time. and i think that's where the white house has gotten bogged down. what is it they're ultimately selling on this thing. now you will hear the president

talk about security and stability, which by the way p president clinton was selling back in '93 and '94 when they got in trouble as well. but that's right, the public option is a relatively small piece of it. there are two big pieces, which is how many people are you going to cover which don't now have health insurance? and are you ultimately going to drive costs down in the health care system? it doesn't look like it if the health care system is still out of control, and now you just have more people who will be in it with insurance. that's a fundamental problem. but the president can't get bogged down in all of that. he has to find something he can actually deliver, that he can sell and that he can deliver. >> mike, let me just jump in. the irony is that on those two points that david mentioned, there's substantially substantial consensus on how to proceed. in terms of expanding coverage, the basic idea is you have a mandate on individuals to buy insurance with government subsidies to help them afford it and in return the insurance industry has to undertake fundamental reform like ending denial of coverage based on pre-existing conditions. the second front, how do you control costs in the long run, there's broad agreement on

instituting a series of experiments in medicare to move away from paying for quantity to paying for quality, moving away from fee-for-service medicine and creating an expedited commission to have authority to move the experiments that work more characteristically into law. that basic approach has more support not only in the democratic party but among groups in the past who have opposed reform. and the challenge for obama is to focus the debate back on the relatively broad consensus which we will see tomorrow with groups like walmart and sciu meeting to talk about their shared vision of reform. to focus back on that and away from these very polarizing, real but still secondary, i think, issues to the overall package. >> we're going to be right with david gregory and ron brownstein with more of the "politics fix." (announcer) it's applebee's 2 for $20.

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olesterol. get the picture. we're back with drafd gregory and ron brownstein. david, earlier in the show we had congressman david connolly of virginia on. he he sort of liked the public option but he said it's not theology to him and his main intent in any legislation is to get to yes. so my question to you and ron, tomorrow night, how does the president of the united states get a majority of people in the house of representatives specifically to get to yes, and doesn't he have to get something out of this ordeal? >> well, look, i think the way he does that is he says to liberals in his party, look,

look what we've got here. are you going to be responsible for taking down health care reform? what we have in the way of an agreement now with the pharmaceutical company, the insurance companies, is something the likes of ted kennedy couldn't achieve over three decades of trying. so let's not -- you know the cliche, let the perfect be the enemy of the good. the other thing i think he's going to say whether he uses these words are not, hey, guys, do you think it's going to get easier to pass health care reform next year? do you think it's going to be more democrats after the midterm election? it's not going to get any better. let us pass something that's significant here and not take it down because we haven't achieved what we think is the only pure approach and try to build on it later. >> how pivotal is it, ron, tomorrow night in terms of the next three years of his presidency, in terms of the off-year election a year from now? >> i think the unfolding of health care is pivotal to the midterm and to the next three years. it's a test not only of his ability to lead the democratic party,