Obama called a health care summit recently in the hopes of getting Republicans and Democrats involved in an adult conversation for the good of America.
In some cases the politicians stepped up to the challenge and made some reasonable points. Since we do have a serious health care problem, we need this sort of behavior. That is, we need our leaders to be leader acting for the good of the nation. This can and should involve disagreements and dispute. However, the debate and disagreement should be aimed at furthering the public good rather than simply scoring political points. While politicians do need to have their eye on the next election, they should not look away from the public good when doing so.
In other cases some folks were simply trying to score political points and engage, as the media pundits love to say, in political theater. That is, putting on a scripted show to sway emotions rather than doing anything that accomplishes anything substantial.
One thing that has been rather interesting about the process is that Obama has been relentless criticized for not doing things that he did, in fact do. For example, it was interesting to see a Republican attacking Obama for not saying which people would attend the summit and what would be done there. The only problem was that Obama had done both of these things. This suggests that some Republicans simple attack Obama without even bothering to consider the facts. Of course, people are generally not inclined to check facts-they generally tend to accept what matches their biases without critical assessment or due investigation.
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