Interesting article discussing the effort to revive and pass HCR. The one thing that is clear is that President Obama was clearly and directly engaged in this fight.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/22/AR2010032203729.html?hpid=topnews
On Jan. 29, Obama traveled to Baltimore for a rare appearance with House Republicans. The televised give-and-take showed him at his best, and it gave a psychological boost to his White House team, including his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who proposed that Obama hold a bipartisan summit, much like the successful summit on welfare reform that Clinton had held in 1995.
Obama, who felt particularly stung by critics who said he had broken his pledge to air the health-care debate on television, immediately embraced the summit concept. It would be a chance to reset the effort, display his willingness to accept Republicans' ideas and claim -- albeit more for show than substance -- that he was crafting a "new" bill that was not sullied by the deals struck in Congress.
Privately, some of his key aides had doubts, such as health-care adviser Nancy-Ann DeParle and legislative liaison Phil Schiliro. They felt that they had tried for nearly a year to reach out to a handful of Republicans, with no success. Why give the GOP another opportunity to delay?
But Obama viewed the summit as a fresh chance to sell the public on his vision and highlight what he considered shortcomings in the Republican proposals. At a meeting in the Roosevelt Room shortly after returning from Baltimore, he ridiculed health-care legislation sponsored by House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio).
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