Reply #84: The senate was already bought and sold by pharma.

[rucky]

I don't think the president needed to intervene - except to prevent the backroom deals with lobbyists (which he did not do). It makes more sense that his "buy off" was to not intervene with the Senate backroom deals. There's plenty of natural incentive for him not to:

1) His priority was to pass something/anything. Nothing meaningful would get to his desk because a majority of Senators are bought off.
2) To politically distance himself from the dealmaking, which is more likely to be weak or fail because a majority of senators are bought off.
3) He could influence legislation like other Presidents have done, but instead worked more closely to how our government is supposed to run - with three independent branches.
4) Even if he tried (and maybe he did), he simply doesn't have as much influence over Congress as industry lobbyists do. And why should he?

What the "blame Obama" crowd is essentially complaining about is that he has not overstepped the bounds of the Executive to influence corrupt Senate legislation. If there's something specific he can do to stop state-elected officials from being bought off on this, I have no idea what that would be.

I'm as angry as anybody, but this is all in the Senate's lap - as well it should be. And Obama's smart to let this live or die by their hands, because if he stuck his neck out, he was unlikely to engineer an outcome any different from what we have now. He's not up for election in 2010, but several Senators are. Everything the Senate touches turns to poison. I don't blame him for stepping back.