While speaking to Congress Wednesday night on his health care reform proposals, President Barack Obama made 3 things abundantly clear:

1) He's urging the controversial Public Option package, which he says will foster competition in the insurance market, thereby lowering overall costs.

2) Mental midgets like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are liars at best and really have no place in the healthcare debate, since they can't do anything but speak to their inbred fans and spread disinformation and pretty much don't care about anything but keeping conservatives in power.

3) Even though conservatives hate him -- some just for being black, others because they can't come up with anything better -- he is going full speed ahead with this plan and those who ain't with him can get out of the way or get run over.

And so goes the president's 50-yard-line drive toward getting health care reform passed before the year is out. It was a great speech, something that will be debated and dissected by television pundits for weeks, but the real question is: what happens next?

Obama's right. We've been dragging our feet with health care reform for a century now. It only took nine years to put a man on the moon, three years to defeat Hitler and about 15 minutes to pass the Three Strikes laws, but somehow, this subject just keeps being pushed off to the next generation of lawmakers and us citizens.

Truth is, the president didn't have to say one word about health care. Like Bush, he could have blown it off. Like Clinton, he could have tried something that was destined for failure. Like Reagan, he could have declared it the bane of human existence. He could have left it alone, because Afghanistan and the economy are enough to fill the plates of two presidents, but he picked up this challenge anyway, which could well serve as the hallmark of his presidency ... or its most palpable defeat.



Conservative Republicans know that this is their last chance to knock Obama off the horse, to show that he is inept and unable to lead. If they do that, then their chances will be better in the 2010 midterm elections and eventually in the 2012 presidential campaign. There can be no wavering with them, no compromise. Like the Sith, they deal only in absolutes.

If they fail, though, then the GOP as we know it will wither and die due to their inability to come up with creative ideas and because they let Rush Limbaugh be their mouthpiece and let Soul Brutha No. 1 Michael ("Off the Hook") Steele take charge of their party.

Obama didn't want this thing to be politicized, but there's no way it couldn't be. So for my money, his next step is to start collecting scalps. That's probably what he means by "seeking common ground," and that's cool. That's what every effective leader does, and as we've observed before, the president is most effective when he grows a pair.

So where do Obama and the Democrats (who currently have the momentum) go from here? Well, here's what he should do if he wants to keep the support of Congressional Democrats, push health care reform through and win in 2012:

* Get the Public Option etched in stone. Even if it is a part of a larger health insurance exchange, the ability to make insurers compete will drive the cost of health care down, as any high school economics student will tell you.

* Sick lawmakers like Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) on people like Beck, Palin, Steele and others who deliberately lie and misinterpret the plan. I went to a town hall meeting that she gave a week ago, and she did more to clearly explain the bill within the space of an hour than all three cable networks have in the past several months. After I heard her talk, there was no way the right wing shooting gallery could skew what's on the table.

* Yes, revisit tort reform so that malpractice premiums can come down and competent, skilled doctors won't drop out of the field of medicine, thereby increasing costs because of an increase in unskilled physicians.

* Keep invoking Ted Kennedy. He just died, so nobody can badmouth him yet. No, seriously -- keep his ideals on affordable health care alive. He was almost there, so don't let him down.

* And lastly, get people to wrap their heads around the idea that Americans are going to pay for health care whether there is a bill passed or not. We can do it the easy way, by passing a comprehensive bill that allows for competition in a varied marketplace, or by doing nothing and letting insurance companies keep costs up and forcing more and more people to use the emergency room as a clinic.

Make no mistake, this is uncharted territory, and we don't know what's really going to happen. Obama wants to sweep this together in four years, by which time we could all be broke anyway. But to his credit, he's doing a hell of a lot more than any president has done in our lifetimes with health care.

Hmm, I wonder what Reagan would have done if he couldn't afford health insurance?

+ Obama on Health Care Reform: The Time For Games Has Passed
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+ How Did He Do? Join The Discussion Among BV Members

See The President's Health Care Reform Plan on WhiteHouse.gov