Let's Not Make A Deal.

From Paul Krugman in the New York Times:

Really bad news on the health care front. After making the case for a public option, and doing it very well, Obama said this:

“We have not drawn lines in the sand other than that reform has to control costs and that it has to provide relief to people who don’t have health insurance or are underinsured,” Mr. Obama said. “Those are the broad parameters that we’ve discussed.”

There he goes again, gratuitously making a big gift to the other side.

My big fear about Obama has always been not that he doesn’t understand the issues, but that his urge to compromise — his vision of himself as a politician who transcends the old partisan divisions — will lead him to negotiate with himself, and give away far too much. He did that on the stimulus bill, where he offered an inadequate plan in order to win bipartisan support, then got nothing in return — and was forced to reduce the plan further so that Susan Collins could claim her pound of flesh.

And now he’s done it on a key component of health care reform. What was the point of signaling, right at this crucial moment, that he’s willing to give away the public plan? Let alone doing it at the very moment that he was making such a good case for it?

Maybe there’s a way to recover from this. But it’s up to the health reform activists to stiffen the administration’s spine. Obama may be satisfied with “broad parameters” — but the rest of us aren’t, and have to make that known.

From Bloomberg.com:

Representative Charles Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said that chamber will pass a measure that includes a public program.

“Americans overwhelmingly support a public option for health care,” Rangel, a Democrat of New York, said today in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “We need competition.” Rangel’s committee holds a hearing on the legislation today.

Obama is signaling that he’s willing to compromise, and yesterday White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel carried the message to lawmakers that the president is “open to alternatives,” Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota said.

Mr. President, please don't tell us that in your quest for bipartisanship, you will negotiate a public option away. Because if you tell us that, we will have to tell you that that's not the change we voted for.

UPDATE: Sen. Conrad denies the Bloomberg story.