P.M. Carpenter

Yesterday the Times' Adam Nagourney invoked a jarring analogy to reframe President Obama's Wednesday night speech, which, Nagourney safely ventured, "was about more than health care." Of equal and perhaps transcendent importance, it was, rather, designed "to show that he was not -- to use the shorthand of the day -- another Jimmy Carter."

Yes, fair to Mr. Carter or not, that's the sort of comparison most any White House would wish to vividly expunge from the get-go. Yet, fair to Mr. Obama or not, it was likely inevitable. For, as Nagourney further observed, "It is one thing to create and surf a political movement" -- "Obamamania!" remember that? -- but "quite another to lead an uneasy country and a politically divided Congress toward tough decisions that create winners and losers."

Well, that's done, and it was done well. But except for a Republican's moronic outburst -- I guess it's true, these people really can't help themselves, like fidgety toddlers in church or incoherently yakkety old guys in nursing homes -- in general we heard nothing new; no new, major delineations, which in any event Congress can and likely will mutilate in conference.

That's what had me puzzled days before his speech to the joint session of Congress. We were told the president would swoop into chambers and for the first time get "specific" and lay down markers, since merely one of health-care reform's many immense problems was that the public knew not what the president wanted. And, it's true, he gave us plenty of what he wants. For the already insured:

By now, notwithstanding the public's mammoth misunderstandings of the various health-care reforms being seriously entertained on Capitol Hill, we should all be clear on at least one thing: the public option is no longer one of them.

No doubt it's still a rallying cry, a slogan, the emotional object of an extended political campaign, and for a few the last principled stand against a swarm of naysayers. But as an actual reform, it's dead.

Dead, dead, dead. And last night, when I read in the NY Times that President Obama, in tonight's speech, intends to "dispel myths that have been swirling around the issue" of health-care reform, I pretty much wished that he'd include the public option as one of them. It swirls, it stalks, it haunts, it hovers -- it creeps among us, but as already toe-tagged.

One of the most ancient formulations of successful warfare is critically twofold but sublimely simple: know yourself and your enemy. Comprehend both and you'll win each battle; understand one without the other and you'll stumble, occasionally victorious but just as often vanquished; embrace neither and you'll lose every time.

Although an ancient formulation, in modern war colleges it's axiomatic. With each passing century its proofs have mounted. In the last century alone, two great powers on opposite sides of the world understood little about their enemies, whom they foolishly provoked. Not two decades later, the principal victor of that conflict violated both precepts -- it neither understood why it was fighting in a faraway jungle nor comprehended its enemy's motives -- to the march of a predictable outcome.

Domestic politics, as we all know, is the (usually) peaceful version of warfare. As such, it comports with the latter's rules to achieve a successful outcome. Hence knowing oneself is essential, but blinding one's self to the opposition's deployable arsenal -- not merely his tangible resources, but his propagandistic truths, however acutely self-serving they may be -- is a grievous and possibly lethal error.

I began to write that Keith Olbermann had the most bizarre opening segment last night, until I realized that in cable news' overall coverage of this story, there was nothing bizarre about it at all. It was, rather, run-of-the-mill misrepresentation and sensationalistic spin; no doubt good for ratings, but b-b-bad to the bone for the brain. It was, in short, O'Reillyesque. Perhaps you saw it, too, but if you didn't ...

Olbermann's rundown of upcoming stories led, as ordinal logic would have it, with an overwrought preview of the first piece, thus fulfilling the sensationalism requirement. Then came the opening piece itself, which was mildly less overwrought but rounded things out in the procrustean misrepresentation department.

The health-care "debate" has dragged on so long and consumed so much political oxygen -- thank you, Congress -- we're becoming brain-damaged players in a vast stage management of vastly superfluous scripts. Worse, we are reaching the point of empty hype and hysteria over rational engagement.

Naturally I exclude the right from the "we" of that diagnosis, since they're beyond brain-damaged. They flatlined long ago, the poor dears, and now feature themselves in nothing but -- even for Roger Corman -- bad Roger Corman flicks. With pupils dilated and arms rigidly extended their call goes forth, "Must ... kill ... progress."

But what of the still-conscious actors? I'm not sure Congressfolks meet that description, either -- they've been on some sort of immovable autopilot for months; factions firmly in place with only their rhetoric spitting occasional droplets of thoughtfulness -- which, in the forefront of this drama, leaves us with the White House and progressives.

For Congressional Democrats, surrender is just the continuation of politics by other means.

That may be an uncanny Clausewitzian twist, but its truth was once clarified by what passes for 21st-century military genius, yes, none other than Rummy himself, who famously observed with an unsettling flourish: Look, you go to war with the army you've got.

That of course explains why Democratic leaders now stand on a stalemated battlefield and at the precipitous lip of surrender: on health care, they went to war with the army they had, which, let's face it, was never much to whoop and hoot and holler about.

Hence the public option is almost certainly a dead man; unquestionably a victim of political war crimes and relentless propagandistic manipulation, but just as unquestionably a sacrificial lamb.

In 1967, as public support for our Southeast Asian adventure in stemming the Yellow Menace began its long and tumultuous descent, President Johnson invited George McGovern and a few of his fellow Senate peaceniks to the White House, for, famously, a touch of "the Treatment." It didn't take. Wrote McGovern shortly afterward, in his diary: "The President is a tortured and confused man -- literally tortured by the mess he has gotten into in Vietnam."

At the time things were bad, really bad, but the worst had yet to come: more unremitting escalations of hope and fury; the putting asunder of the Democratic Party and the nation at large; a deteriorated presidency; an elusive, nearly invisible enemy; endless expense; muddled objectives; remorseless death ...

I read this --"Experts see double-digit Dem losses" -- yesterday evening, and this morning I'm still scratching my head, asking, Would its realization make any difference of real consequence? Just as disconcerting is the compulsion to even ask the question; that, in itself, is a realization of worst fears.

On to the specifics, which begin with that "small"-- but expanding -- "universe of political analysts," writes the Politico, "who closely follow House races" and already envision something of a bloodbath in that chamber in 2010.

Casualties, forecast as "moderate to heavy," might even approach the unthinkable of just a few short months ago: a near-majority triumph for the GOP, an idealess lump of disarrayed stragglers which only the Democratic Party, in all its own competitive disarray, could possibly re-elevate.

If Orrin Hatch were any slimier, he would have slid right out of those multiple chairs he occupied on multiple talk shows yesterday. The man positively oozed deceit, almost laughably so.

But it was also clear that what he was selling had been poll-tested and focus-grouped with the usual GOP rigor, which means the peddled product was confidently designed to scare the unholy bejesus out of the largest possible number of the oldest of lowest information voters.