Word: reformers
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...matters. But so do skill and energy. We must be able to make staffing decisions based on performance, not just time served. This President has shown an unprecedented willingness to challenge the powerful teachers' unions, but unless we finally eradicate these anachronistic employment rules, we'll continue to define reform as good intentions, extra dollars and insufficient results...
Barack Obama's top pollster, Joel Benenson, talks fast. "Like a New Yorker, because I am," he says. The night before we spoke, he slept four hours, and after more than a year of watching the numbers slide around his big client's signature initiative, health care reform, one can forgive him for betraying a bit of frustration. "It's never enough to just say people are unhappy," he explains. "You've got to understand why they are unhappy...
...Since August, he's had to deal with "death panels," the "cornhusker kickback" and daily proclamations of a "government takeover" of health care. He has watched Obama's approval rating fall from the high 60s to the high 40s, while opposition to Democratic health care reforms have inched above 50% in many polls. Recently, he's even had Republican leaders declare that Democratic hopes for the November elections will collapse if health care reform becomes law. "Do you really think the Republicans are out there trying to save Democrats from themselves?" he asks. (See the top 10 medical breakthroughs...
...short term, the GOP tactic to focus attention on process may be working, at least among the Washington press corps. In a briefing on Tuesday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs fielded more than 20 questions and follow-ups related to the process of passing health care reform. But is the public actually bothered by the convoluted process Democrats may use to pass reform? An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released on Tuesday and conducted on March 10 showed that just 35% of Americans oppose reconciliation, while 26% supported it and 37% said they didn't know enough about...
...course, the intended audience for the GOP talking points on process isn't really the American public. It's nervous House Democrats wondering about the political costs of voting for reform. "We've got to put all the pressure we can on these Democrats to make sure this bill never, ever happens," says House minority leader John Boehner...