captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> ifill: good evening. i'm gwen ifill. president obama calls for a health care summit: bipartisan solution or party politics? >> brown: and i'm jeffrey brown. on the newshour tonight, we look at the latest jockeying over policy and power after some conservatives rallied around sarah palin at this weekend's tea party convention. >> ifill: then, nearly one month after the quake hit, a report from haiti on the ongoing struggle for survival. >> brown: and ray suarez gets two views on what it will take

to rebuild haiti's government. >> ifill: making a list and checking it twice: betty ann bowser looks at one way to cut health care costs. >> in michigan they had a two-third reduction in within a year, saved 600 lives an 2 $am dollars. >> brown: and more than just a football game, as new orleans celebrates a super bowl victory. we play for so much more than just ourselves, we play for our city. >> ifill: that's all ahead on tonight's pbs newshour. major funding for the pbs newshour is provided by: >> what the world needs now is energy. the energy to get the economy humming again. the energy to tackle challenges like climate change. what if that energy came from an energy company? every day, chevron invests $62 million in people, in ideas-- seeking, teaching, building. fueling growth around the world to move us all ahead.

this is the power of human energy. chevron. pacific life. the william and flora hewlett foundation, working to solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world. and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations.

and... this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> ifill: from left to right, the national political scene was in ferment today. that followed president obama's latest appeal for bipartisanship, and sarah palin's latest turn on the national stage. >> it didn't take much for the president to draw a link between the winter storm that paralyzed the nation's capitol this weekend and the challenges facing his party. >> we may be moving forward against the prevailing winds, sometimes maybe against a blizzard. but we're going to live up to our responsibility to lead. >> reporter: the political blizzard the president told

loyal democrats meeting at a washington hotel on saturday was being engineered by republicans. the solution, heing suggested the very next day, was to invite gop leaders to the white house later this month to jump-start a bipartisan health care debate. he said the televised meeting patterned in part after a republican session he attended in baltimore would solicit ideas. gop leaders said they would accept the president's invitation but any debate, they suggested, must begin from scratch. the best way to start on real bipartisan reform would be to scrap those bills, house republican leader john boehner said in a statement. >> thank you dnc. >> reporter: it was a big weekend for political positioning as the president was rallying his troops and challenging republicans in washington, a collection of conservative activists were stirring the political pot in nashville. >> ladies and gentlemen, sarah palin. >> reporter: the star of the inaugural national tea party

convention was 2008 vice presidential nominee sarah palin who said democrats have failed to keep promises. >> how is that healthy changey stuff working out for you. >> reporter: palin also told fox news she has not ruled out running for president in 2012. >> i think that it would be absurd to not consider what it is that i can potentially do to help our country. i don't know if it's going to be ever seeking a title, though. it may be just doing a darn good job. >> reporter: delegates paid $600 each to attend the tea party meeting. the goal, organizers said, is to raise money and help elect conservatives to congress in 2010 and to the white house in 2012. >> the tea party is less defined as a grass roots yun rising, a grassroots movement. it is not a political party it is not the green party. it is not the libertarian party t is far younger, and far less well organized than either of those. this is just a very loosely

affiliated group of people coming together around the idea that the government has intruded too far into their lives. >> reporter: i'm happy about taxes, deficit spending and big government, tea party organizers that helped candidates in massachusetts, florida, nevada and other states. but for now, palin is the closest thing the movement has to being a national political standard-bearer. >> i think she speaks like we do. she thinks like we do. she is a down to earth person. >> reporter: the movement's leaders made clear they are taking aim at both republicans and democrats. >> both major party, the ds and the rs have both kind of locked their way in some respect when the gop strays from the planks and the platforms, a people's movement like the tea party movement is invited in to kind of hold these politicians accountable again and remind them of their constitutional limits. >> reporter: the president's olive branch strategy begins tomorrow when lawmakers from

both partys arrived at the white house for a previously scheduled meeting on the economy. here to help us sort through this weekend's political news is amy walter, editor-in-chief of the "hotline," "national journal's" daily briefing on politics. let's take these two things separately starting with the president's announcement about this televised health care what, negotiation? what this called. >> i think it is a summit, very fond of the word summit at the white house these days. and you know, let's see what this turns out to be. obviously you see already republicans saying we're not just going to start midway. we have to start from scratch. knowing full well that you cannot start from scratch and expect to get anything done before the end of the legislative session. the president too in an interesting position here and the white house saying, now for a few weeks, that they want to make the midterm election a choice election between what democrats are proposingnd what republicans are proposing as opposed to a referendum on the democratic

party. >> ifill: so these meeting whether it be tomorrow's meeting, or this big thing on february 25th, i guess, are they really about fixing the problem or are they about leaving the impression that they are at least talking to one another. >> i think it is the latter. i think political posturing as you put in your piece is probably the better way to look at this. democrats hoping that voters are going to look at the ballot in 2010 and see not a democratic party that failed to deliver, but republicans who stood in their way. that is a very tough argument to make when you control everything in washington and by big margins. >> ifill: but on the health care at least there is some middle ground where they could conceivably get something done, isn't there. >> theoretically but how much trouble have democrats had with their own party. i mean that has been the big part of it too, was so much of the negotiations were not simply with republicans but with democrats. i think what is interesting that president obama is doing too is sort of setting up congress as the bad guy here, which is not necessarily good for his party in 20150.$c

now for the president to be able to say let's ride above-- rise above this, let's get away from the partisanship and sniping, we know that in order to get legislation passed, it's going to still be not very pretty when all is said and done. and congress already suffering from very low approval ratings. it could make things even worse for that party, and his own party going into 2010. >> ifill: isn't he also speaking to his own party saying i haven't completely abandoned health care. >> well, that's right. that, he is saying don't worry, i'm to the going to give up on this. democrats in 2010 terrified that they are going to have to run for re-election without any tangible evidence of major legislation passing in the middle of a recession. they spent all this time and energy on a health-care bill that went nowhere. they want to see something happen. now in the end-- in the end do we see that the president reaches out, republicans say we want all these changes, the president says tas's not acceptable, they say well, that's not acceptable to us, ultimately something passes, that's just a very minor fix.

democrats able to at least say we passed something. it wasn't a total loss. but the idea of a sweeping change in health care seems very unlikely. >> ifill: let's talk to something else and figure out if it is sweeping as well. the political flip side, the tea party convention this weekend, was this the beginning of making the tea party movement an actual, real, cohesive movement. >> i think there is an important distinction made between a mood and a movement. there is a mood out there that goes beyond this tea party convention that sort of permeated both parties and independents, as well, which is frustration with the status quo. frustration with business as usual. and what the tea party movement had done is been able to sort of capture that, bring people together in the hopes of channeling it to electing their own candidates or deposing current incumbents. we haven't seen quite yet if they are able to do that. they said they will put a pact together, raise something like $10 million to target condition datas.

we know that activists say that they are getting involved in certain races. but when you look fundamentally at the people who are running as these so-called tea party can dants you pointed to, scott brown in massachusetts or in florida, marco rubio running against charlie crist, the governor for the republican nomination for senate, those are all establishment candidates. scott brown was in the legislature for years, marco rubio was at one time the speaker of the house. so these are not, these are not people who have come somehow out of the ether. these are people who are establishment candidates who are picking up on the mood and reworking their identity to be an outsider. >> ifill: and sarah palin was to the only the governor of a big state, as she likes to point out but also the party's vice presidential nominee which doesn't make her an outsider. >> rit. >> ifill: but does she get to be the leader of the movement anyway. >> and this is what is happening in 2010. what we are seeing are candidates who are recognizing the mood and those candidates who aren't. so if you recognize the mood early and grab that change mantle, that outsider mantle

even if you were an insider, you are able to make yourself look like an outsider. governor rick perry in texas is the perfect example. he has been the longest serving governor in texas history. he is running as the outsider in his re-election race because his opponent in the primary is a sitting united states senator. and it is making washington the bad guy as opposed to, you know-- . >> ifill: the president is making washington the bad guy which is pretty easy to do. but does this mean that sar-- does it matter, even, whether sarah palin is running for president or not or is it just the platform everybody wants to climb on to right now? >> well, for her sake, it does matter that she leaves that impression out there that she is looking to run for president. >> ifill: because. >> because no matter what she wants to do next, whether she runs or not, she has a pretty good gig going. i mean she is still bringing in lots of attention to herself. she has her own analysis now, i guess, slot on fox news. she is able to bring in a lot in speaking fees. she's not going to be able

to do that if she is seen as somebody who is not particularly interested in running again. people want to see what she does and want to see what she says. now whether or not she is able to translate this support she's getting into tangible support when it comes to 2012, ie, is she going to be able to organize caucuses, is she going to be able to raise money, is she going to be able to do that sort of grass roots stuff that you need to do, that's a whole other question aiz. >> ifill: amy walter as always you clear things up, thank you very much. >> an still to come on the newshour, haiti after the earthquake, checking for safety in the operating room and celebrating a big win in the big easy. >> but first the other you news of the day. here's hari sreenivasan in our newsroom. >> sreenivasan: veteran congressman john murtha died today at a hospital in arlington, virginia. he had complications from

gall bladder surgery. the pennsylvania democrat was a marine corps officer in vietnam, and was known as a democratic hawk. but in november of 2005, he demanded president bush withdraw u.s. troops from iraq. >> this is a flawed policy, wrapped in an illusion! and the american public knows it. and lashing out at critics doesn't help a bit. you've got to change the policy. that's what's going to help the american people. we need to change direction. >> sreenivasan: murtha had been in the house since 1974, and was scrutinized a number of times over ethical questions. he was 77 years old. the nation's capital and the mid-atlantic region were still snowbound today in the wake of the weekend blizzard. the snow closed down government, schools, and roads, and forecasters predicted even more snow soon. across the region people labored to dig out n someplaces up to three feet of snow. nearly 100,000 power customers were still in the dark. and utility companies warned it could be days before

electricity is fully restored. in washington alone federal agencies that employ nearly 230,000 people were closed as many roads remained difficult if not dangerous to drive. >> the district didn't really handle this very well. i men they didn't clean any of the streets. haven't seen any trucks on my street. >> i'm from new hampshire so this is nothing. but october veysly the damage, so the city has to get itself back on its feet. >> reporter: washington d.c. mayor add recent fenty said the city was trying to do just that and like officials across maryland and virginia, he urged patience. >> even though we are had sun a the last couple of days not a lot of paces the snow could go. and so we're working through all those issuesment but making no excuse to trying to get the city open and running, as quickly and fast as humanly possible. >> reporter: just how quickly that happens was critical for thousands of students and teachers as schools remained closed at

least through tuesday. but major airports resumed flights on a limited basis. amtrak also restored train service with delays. and washington subway system was operated in a limited capacity, aboveground service for the metro was suspended. in the meantime, a new winter storm warning is in effect with as much as a foot or more of new snow expected to begin falling tomorrow. washington has had nearly 45 inches of snow this winter, just nine short of the record set in 1899. and philadelphia may break its record this week going back to 1884. in contrast, there's not enough snow in vancouver, canada, where the winter olympics are set to open on friday. workers have been using helicopters and trucks to haul snow to the sites of skiing and snowboard competitions. an avalanche killed at least 17 indian soldiers today at a training center in the part of kashmir controlled by india. 17 other soldiers were critically wounded. they'd been in the middle of ski

training exercises on the himalayan slopes when the mass of snow and ice swept them away. more than 50 officers were rescued six hours after the avalanche. in ukraine, the opposition leader claimed a narrow victory in sunday's presidential election. viktor yanukovich took a pro- russian stance against the pro- western government. his opponent, prime minister yulia tymoshenko, charged election fraud, and threatened to call out supporters. in 2004, the presidential vote results were thrown out after yanukovich initially won. but international monitors said this year's election was an "impressive display" of democracy. iran may have moved closer to being able to produce a nuclear warhead. the country's top nuclear envoy said today iran will begin enriching uranium to higher levels. he insisted it's only to provide fuel for research, not for weapons. in response, the u.s. and france said it's time to pursue new sanctions. defense secretary robert gates spoke in paris.

>> if iran continues and develops nuclear weapons, it almost certainly will provoke nuclear proliferation in the middle east. this is a huge danger. the key is persuading the iranian leaders that their long-term best interests are best served by not having nuclear weapons. >> sreenivasan: on another front, the u.s. and the european union also urged iran today to live up to its international human rights obligations. there is fear of another government crackdown later this week, marking the founding of the islamic republic. the death toll from an explosion at a connecticut power plant site should stand at five. that was the word today from state authorities on the scene in middletown. the blast erupted as workers were testing natural gas lines, but the exact cause remained under investigation. the power plant was under construction. wall street took another hit today over new fears about rising debt in europe.

the dow jones industrial average lost 103 points to close at 9908, its first close below 10,000 since november. the nasdaq fell 15 points to finish at 2126. the former boss at merrill-lynch will be the new chairman and chief executive at c.i.t. group. john thain organized the sale of merrill lynch to bank of america in late 2008. later, he was forced out over bonus payments to employees and lavish renovations to his office. c.i.t. is a major lender to small- and mid-sized companies. it recently emerged from bankruptcy reorganization. michael jackson's personal physician was charged today with involuntary manslaughter. dr. conrad murray is a cardiologist. he was with jackson when the pop star died last june. prosecutors said murray acted improperly by giving jackson powerful sedatives to help him sleep. >> the doctor pled not guilty at a court appearance. those are some of the day's main stories. i'll be back at the end of the program with a preview of what you'll find tonight on the newshour's web site. but for now, back to jeff.

>> brown: nearly four weeks after the earthquake struck, aid groups have launched a campaign to vaccinate more than 100,000 people against measles, diphtheria, and tetanus. but many quake victims still aren't receiving enough food and other aid. emma murphy of independent television news updates the story from port-au-prince. >> risk their lives they skaff age on rubble filled trucks. it is the steel from destroyed buildings a treasure to be fought over. we two men do battle, rock and knife in hand. they have lost so much. they can't bare to lose any more. for those who survived what a life is left to need, 2 million displaced in makeshift camps. already some of the injured are back in their shacks as everyone tries to adjust to their new existence. aid is getting through but

it's slow. this woman shows us the bag of rice she has to feed three families. it's only just arrived. in the same camp others have received nothing. they are hungry and desperate for help. this woman's grandchild is now anemic and very weak. there is food on the street but it's too expensive for most so they cue for hours for hand outs. >> no one is more frustrated than ourselves that we face such massive challenges in getting food out. but we are moving that food now. we are looking to get up to 160,000 people a day and we are very close to that now. >> these are the elderly people itv reported after the earth qa quake. they are settled in aid tents but what a way to spend your latter years, frightened, displaced, disorientated. the many are trying to

jostle for position at the immigration office for a passport out. the street signs say all, written for english for the western world to understand. >> and ray suarez continues our haiti coverage with a look at the government and its rebuilding efforts. >> suarez: for that we get two few, we have an associate professor of political science at the university of missouri in st. louis. born and raised in port-au-prince, he is an american citizen. and the director of the international security and defense policy center at the rand corporation, a career diplomat until 20023, he served as the clinton administration's special envoy to haiti in the mid 1990s. professor, there is a group of elected and appointed officials in port-au-prince who call themselves the government of the republic of haiti. are they in charge of the country in any meaningful way. and what should they be doing in the near term? >> well, i'm not sure that

they are in charge of haiti in any meaningful way. but certainly there needs to be haitians in charge of the country. it's very clear from what has been happening since the earthquake that the haitian government is unable to function for understandable reasons. the structures of the haitian state were destroyed. but even before the earthquake haiti was known as a fragile and less admitted failed city. the destruction of january 12th, 2010, was certainly caused by nature, but the scale of the destruction speaks to generations, if not centuries of ineffectual government. so therefore more than ever haiti now needs a working

government. >> suarez: ambassador, how do you do that, mix the people's choice. i mean there is an elected set of office holders there, with the need to coordinate massive aid inflows and the need to getgoing right away. >> well, i think you have to separate the humanitarian phase from the reconstruction phase, at least intellectually. the humanitarian is something foreigners will do for haitians. hundreds, maybe thousands of nongovernmental organizations, governments and international organizations have converged on haiti and are providing direct assistance in terms of food, medicine, shelter and water. but the reconstruction phase is one that has to be done with a much stronger haitian participation. there has been a nation-building operation under way in haiti since 2004. and so there is a preexisting set opuq#orms that have been outlined and were in the process of being

implemented. and there is an international structure, a u.n. peacekeeping course, representative of the u.n. secretary-general whose's the most senior international official on the island. and now we have a much greater american role, participation and support. this all has to be accord nighted and-- all has to be coordinated and the focus of the effort has to be not just in brick and mortar an construction but in institutional reconstruction so that in the end we have a stronger haitian government. so in the end the real reconstruction project is a project in state building. >> suarez: when i was in haiti recently, amba ambac-- ambassador, the president told me that those hundreds of thousands who had fled to the countryside, maybe it would be a good idea if they stayed there. another minister mentioned places in the capitol that should not be rebuilt to discourage people from coming back. but is there any local haitian authority that can make either of those things happen? >> well, there's a u.n.

peacekeeping force of about 10,000 troops and that's being increased. there are a couple thousand u.n. policemen. there are about 8 or 9,000 haitian policemen who have recently been trained and are actually doing rather well before the earthquake. the international community is going to have to provide the resources. but to the extent they can work with haitian authorities to, for instance, segregate areas of the city which shouldn't be repopulated until they can be rebuilt, guide people to the proper areas to set up transient camps, those kinds of things, they should do so. i do think that the international role needs to be expanded. the secretary-general's representative needs to be given a greater authority than he has had in the past. but we can't, we can't build a haitian state by starting off ignoring the haitian government. there has to be some effort to engage it, to support it, and progressively to put resources through it rather than directly using american or foreign nongovernmental

organizations. >> suarez: professor, how do you do that? how do you put enough haitian authority and a haitian face on the identity of a reconstruction and at the same time give the international community the chance to get in there and do what needs to be done? >> well, i have argued for a joint trust. now i realize that the word trust has a bad history. but what i mean by that is a partnership among the united nations, haitians, and what i would call a haiti reconstruction authority. so this would really be a joint effort because the reconstruction of haiti should not be expected to be undertaken by the haitians themselves. because inside haiti the resources are simply not there. so the international community along with haitians

will have to cooperate if haiti is to be reconstructed. >> suarez: well, professor is there an example of that working in the recent past, that the world can look to as sort of a tool kit, a model for what you are suggesting for haiti? >> well, i think what happened in indonesia could be a guide. there the international community played an important role in the reconstruction of the area. but at the same time the indonesian government was not left standing on the sideline. now i realize that in indonesia the central state was not directly affected by the tsunami. so it was left standing. but nevertheless, i think that would be one of the closest examples of international cooperation that might be applicable to the haitian milieu. >> suarez: how does that sound to you, a haitian reconstruction authority? >> i think that-- i think some imagination should be used to construct an

international haitian partnership under these circumstances. i would point out, though, that while haiti is probably suffered the most massive natural disaster in recent memory on a per capita basis, there are other states that the u.n. and the natural community have helped pull back from failure that were in even worse shape than haiti, ciber ya, sierra leone, both had decades-long civil wars. they are even poore-- poorer than haiti, had even less competent governments than haiti and they have both been pulled back from the brink and both have functioning governments at the moment. so there is a history and a set of techniques that can help in this kind of situation. and i think that the extra resources that haiti is now going to have, and the fact that the haitian system has been so shocked, so devastated may make it easier to introduce some of these reforms than had been the case previously.

>> suarez: people have been talking about five, ten and twentyy years. professor, quickly before we go, does the international community have enough of an attention span with haiti to be involved for that long? >> that's a very good question, ray. i'm not sure about that. i think, i've written elsewhere that the reconstruction of haiti which should not be only to port-au-prince, by the way. rural haiti needs as much reconstruction as port-au-prince. that effort will take at least a generation or 20 years. i'm not sure that the international community will be willing to stay the course. i hope that it does. >> suarez: professor, mr. ambassador, thank you both. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> ifill: next, a simple fix for cutting health care costs and saving lives. newshour health correspondent betty ann bowser explains.

>> he no known drug allergies,. >> reporter: a 50-year-old man is about to undergo emergency surgery at brigham and women's hospital if boston for a dangerous infection in an artery in his leg. >> big breaths, in and out. that's great. >> reporter: he's surrounded by technology and highly skilled doctors and nurses who spent years training for their profession. >> doing great. >> reporter: but they're about to employ something breathtakingly simple to make sure mr. wolf has a successful outcome. it's a checklist of 19 points including making sure everybody in the or introduces themselves. >> ed, surgeon. >> neil -- >> surgery resident. >> my name is anee,. >> i'm the attending anesthesiologist. >> this gentleman we're performing an excision of an

infected femoral bypass graft today. want to make sure we have any necessary equipment, looks good. irrigation, a lot of anti-biotic irgration. we have an ultrasound in case we need it. >> reporter: watching all of this was best selling author and general surgeon at brigham and women's dr. gawanday. >> i never in a million years thought i would be writing a book about checklists. >> reporter: but that is what his new book, the checklist manifesto, how to get things right, is about. it grew out of work he did for the world health organization which asked him to help them find a way to reduce deaths in surgery. >> that was when we came across the idea. we knew we had technology and incredible levels of training. people working unbelievably hard. but we have more than 100,000 deaths just in the united states following surgery. half are avoidable from our studies. what could we do.

we have found this idea, this extra tool that others were using in aviation, in skyscraper construction. and thought well, let's give it a try. >> reporter: after months of research, in 2008, he and his team created the surgical safety checklist for the who. >> we have a pause before the anesthesia is given, and another pause before the incision, and then a pause before the patient leaves the room. we timed it to kep it less than 2 minutes in a routine operation. and we had, in order to keep it short it meant there were some very simple checks. some dumb stuff, make sure an ant biteic was given, make sure blood was available and some interesting things which were much more about having a team prepare for handling the complexities. >> reporter: it may be hard to believe, but some of the dumb stuff doesn't always get done prior to surgery. and gawanda says that is one reason there are so many preventable complications.

>> when we deployed it in 8 hospitals around the world, and they range from seattle, london, toronto, to poor settings, rural tanz ania, each hospital had a reduction in complications. the average reduction was more than a third. and we saw a significant drop in deaths as well. >> reporter: and it didn't matter if the hospital was rich or poor. he argues the simple checklist is effective because in today's high-tech complex medical world there is just too much for the human mind to remember. >> fairly standard to use a prosthetic for this portion of the procedure and save veins for later. >> you can take two lessons outth