WHERE'S THE BEEF? It's good to see Obama getting a bit of mainstream media pushback for his campaign's lack of substance and specifics. Issues matter! And so do approaches to issues. At the SEIU/CAP health care forum last weekend, Obama explained away his lack of a health care policy by suggesting that "every four years somebody trots out a white paper," the real question was whether they could muster the consensus and political will to pass and implement a plan. Okay, true. So, uh, can he? Obama has never passed a major piece of legislation in the United State Senate, after all. He's not explained why insurers and pharmaceutical companies and for-profit hospitals and conservatives and big retailers and all the rest will flip on their historic opposition to universal health reform. If you're not going to put out your plan and prefer to instead explain your political strategy, I'm down with that. But then you have to actually explain your political strategy. So far, Obama has proven himself a unifying and consensus-building figure in that a lot of liberals like him. He's not proven himself a unifying and consensus figure able to pass major articles of legislation or defuse traditional opponents to his ideas. So, fine, he can eschew the white paper for now. But he needs to give those of us worried about health care reform something to go on. --Ezra Klein
