Obama quote: 'We were in such a hurry to get things done that we didn't change HOW things got done'

[scheming daemons]

'We were in such a hurry to get things done that we didn't change HOW things got done'

From today's press conference.

I think that's an accurate assessment. The anti-HCR angst in the summer of 2009, by both teabaggers and progressives, was a direct result of the sausage-making process in Washington.

It wasn't transparent, it wasn't an open debate.



I think the end-result was good legislation.... by the dragging out of the process, and the way it was done, soured EVERYBODY.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

1. I always thought if there was anywhere he was being naive, it was there.

The process got to this point over the course of 200 years. It's utterly naive to think you're going to stride in and change it in 2 years or even in 20 years. And, sadly, it's gotten to this point for some good reasons - namely that negotiating simply cannot be done in public, that "special interests" (and I hate that term - it's so misleading) probably should have a pretty big say whether that's popular or not, and the media is going to take their own pound of flesh. Without a structural change to how our government works - and I'm talking constitutional convention - the process is going to be the process.

It was dumb of him to make the claim that he was going to change that. It was a vast overreach or a tragic miscalculation.

[mazzarro]

2. Not Taking Seriously Democratic Negative Reaction Is His Problem IMO

They were in such a hurry - yet they let Senator Baucus do his merry-go-round of "negotiation" and delays on HCR and never realized that the process stunk? "Negotiated" backroom deals with pharma and hospitals and never realized the arrangements would become public? Somehow I think Obama and his team assumed too much about people accepting their ways of doing business and they got carried away - particularly discounting the negative reaction of democrats.

[zipplewrath]

3. In otherwords, he did no wrong

Basically he is saying he's brilliant, people just couldn't see it.

He's drinking his own bathwater again.

People ARE upset with the product, not just the process. The process is just what led to getting a lousy product.

[jwirr]

4. Putting it off until 2014 was a real mistake and not listening to the

wishes of the people was the rest of the mistake with HCR.