Many now see hothead Washington caricature as as a voice of reason

Rahm Emanuel is officially a Washington caricature. He’s the town’s resident leviathan, a bullying, bruising White House chief of staff who is a prime target for the failings of the Obama administration.

But a contrarian narrative is emerging: Emanuel is a force of political reason within the White House and could have helped the administration avoid its current bind if the president had heeded his advice on some of the most sensitive subjects of the year: health-care reform, jobs and trying alleged terrorists in civilian courts.

It is a view propounded by lawmakers and early supporters of President Obama who are frustrated because they think the administration has gone for the perfect at the expense of the plausible. They believe Emanuel, the town’s leading purveyor of four-letter words, a former Israeli army volunteer and a product of a famously argumentative family, was not aggressive enough in trying to persuade a singularly self-assured president and a coterie of true-believer advisers that “change you can believe in” is best pursued through accomplishments you can pass.

By all accounts, Obama selected Emanuel for his experience in the Clinton White House, his long relationships with the media and Democratic donors, and his well-established — and well-earned — reputation as a political enforcer, all of which neatly counterbalanced Obama’s detached, professorial manner. A president who would need the deft navigation of Congress to pass his ambitious legislation turned to the Illinois congressman and former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee because he possessed a unique understanding of the legislative mind.

The pairing made sense, but things haven’t worked out as expected. And in the search for what has gone wrong, influential Democrats are — in unusually frank terms — blaming Obama and his closest campaign aides for not listening to Emanuel. And this puts the 50-year-old chief of staff in a very uncomfortable position.

Listening to Emanuel would serve “all our overall goals,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.). “I think that Rahm’s considerable legislative experience translates into advice that the president should heed.”

Instead, Obama went for the historically far-reaching, but more legislatively difficult, achievements that he and his campaign-forged inner circle believe they were sent to Washington to deliver.

‘Gut instincts’ on 9/11 trials
In December 2008, Obama, Emanuel and Republican Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) met in Obama’s transition headquarters in Chicago to discuss detainee policy. According to Graham, Obama turned to him at one point and said, ” ‘I’m going to need your help closing Guantanamo Bay. . . . I want you and Rahm to start talking.’ ” They did, and as the discussions progressed, Emanuel grew wary that closing the U.S. military prison in Cuba was possible without opening a slew of other politically sensitive national security problems ” ‘This stuff is like flypaper,’ ” Graham recalled Emanuel saying. ” ‘It will stick to you.’ ”

Graham said Emanuel was well aware that his and any other Republican support for closing Guantanamo Bay hinged on keeping alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed out of civilian court.

According to a person familiar with the conversations, who discussed the confidential deliberation on the condition of anonymity, Emanuel made his case to Obama, articulating the political dangers of a civilian trial to congressional Democrats. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. presented a counterargument rooted in principle, for civilian trials.

David Axelrod, senior adviser to Obama, supported Holder, the source said. The president agreed that letting the Justice Department take the lead was the right thing to do.

“Axelrod has a strong view of the historic character Obama is supposed to be,” said an early Obama supporter who is close to the president and spoke on the condition of anonymity to give a frank assessment of frustration with the White House. The source blamed Obama’s charmed political life for creating a self-confidence and trust in principle that led to an “indifference to doing the small, marginal things a White House could do to mitigate the problems on the Hill. Rahm knows the geography better.”

Emanuel and Axelrod declined to comment for this article.

“During this whole civilian-trial debate, Rahm’s gut instincts knew that taking KSM to New York for civilian trials was going to be a misstep,” Graham said. “He has a better ear for domestic politics on this issue than anybody in the administration, quite frankly.”

With the Justice Department in charge, Emanuel tried to keep tabs on the process through Graham. “He’d say: ‘How’s it going? Did you tell them they were going to lose you?’ And in terms a sailor could understand.”

One administration official close to Emanuel did not dispute that Obama had overruled Emanuel on some key policy issues. “It’s not germane what the discussion was beforehand, what his idea was, because once a decision is made, he puts himself whole-hog behind it,” the official said of Emanuel. “It would be difficult for people to discern what his [original] position was.”

Abortion opponents, fiscal conservatives may scuttle health care overhaul

WASHINGTON - The future of President Obama’s health care overhaul now rests largely with two blocs of swing Democrats in the House of Representatives — abortion opponents and fiscal conservatives — whose indecision signals the difficulties Speaker Nancy Pelosi faces in securing the votes necessary to pass the bill.

With Republicans unified in their opposition, Democrats are drafting plans to try on their own to pass a bill based on one Mr. Obama unveiled before his bipartisan health forum last week. His measure hews closely to the one passed by the Senate in December, but differs markedly from the one passed by the House.

That leaves Ms. Pelosi in the tough spot of trying to keep wavering members of her caucus on board, while persuading some who voted no to switch their votes to yes — all at a time when Democrats are worried about their prospects for re-election.

Representative Dennis Cardoza, Democrat of California, typifies the speaker’s challenge. The husband of a family practice doctor, he is intimately familiar with the failings of the American health care system. His wife “comes home every night,” he said, “angry and frustrated at insurance companies denying people coverage they have paid for.”

‘I think we can do better’
But as a member of the centrist Blue Dog Coalition, Mr. Cardoza is not convinced that Mr. Obama’s bill offers the right prescription. It lacks anti-abortion language he favors, and he does not think it goes far enough in cutting costs. So while he voted for the House version — “with serious reservations,” he said — he is now on the fence.

“I think we can do better,” Mr. Cardoza said of the president’s proposal.

Representative Frank Kratovil Jr., Democrat of Maryland, is also unconvinced. He voted against the House bill on the grounds that it is too big and too costly — a view that some constituents in his Republican-leaning district share. In case he did not get the message, one of them hanged him in effigy this past summer outside his district office on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

“This system is broken; we have to do something,” Mr. Kratovil said. “But my preference would be to do smaller things.”

Under the Democrats’ tentative plans, the House would pass the health care bill approved in December by the Senate, and both chambers would approve a separate package of changes using a parliamentary device known as budget reconciliation.

The tactic is intended to avoid a Republican filibuster, but in the Senate, the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, faces challenges if he tries to use it. He is having trouble persuading a majority of his caucus to go along.

In the House, lawmakers like Mr. Kratovil, Mr. Cardoza and other swing Democrats will come under increasing scrutiny from leadership as a vote draws near. Of the 219 Democrats who initially voted in favor of the House measure, roughly 40 did so in part because it contained the so-called Stupak amendment, intended to discourage insurers from covering abortion.

Some, notably Representative Bart Stupak, the Michigan Democrat for whom the amendment is named, will almost certainly switch their yes votes to no because the new version being pushed by Mr. Obama would strip out the House bill’s abortion restrictions in favor of Senate language that many of them consider unacceptable.

Americans overwhelmingly believe that the government is broken, according to a national poll released Sunday.

But the CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey also indicates that the public overwhelmingly holds out hope that what’s broken can be fixed.

Eighty-six percent of people questioned say that the system of government is broken, with 14 percent saying no.

Of the 86 percent, 81 percent say that the government can be fixed, but 5 percent say it’s beyond repair.

The Obama administration will propose legislation that would allow the government to block excessive rate hikes by health insurance companies, a senior administration official said.

The official could not speak on the record because the White House has not formally announced the proposal.

Word of the administration plan comes as the White House was to unveil President Obama’s latest health insurance reform proposal at 10 a.m. ET Monday.

The House of Representatives and Senate have passed their own versions of health care reform. The new Obama plan is expected to attempt to smooth the differences.

The proposal seeks to put “American families and small business owners in control of their own health care,” the official said. It stems from discussions that have taken place with the House and Senate, the official said.

Obama will propose changes that include eliminating the so-called “Nebraska deal,” a provision worked in by Sen. Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat, that exempts that state from paying increased Medicaid expenses, the official said.

The president also plans to include a series of measures proposed by Republicans to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse.

His proposal also introduces a new provision to prevent arbitrary insurance rate hikes such as a recent 39 percent increase in California.

That provision incorporates legislation last week introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, to protect people from such hikes — a measure that came after the premium increase by Anthem Blue Cross of California, two senior administration officials said.

The proposal also would give the secretary of health and human services new authority to stop private health insurance companies from increasing their premiums, calling on the secretary to work with state regulators to review rate increases and deem them justified or unjustified, according to the officials.

In addition, the proposal would create a Health Insurance Rate Authority — a group of health care experts who would issue an annual report with their assessment on what they would consider reasonable premium increases.

The HHS secretary also would work with a seven-member board made up of doctors, economists and consumer and insurance representatives to review premium hikes, the officials said.

The board would provide an annual report to recommend to states whether certain rate increases should be approved, although the secretary could overrule state insurance regulators.

A televised bipartisan discussion on the health care overhaul is scheduled Thursday.

Obama believes the discussion “will be the most productive if Democrats come to the table with a consolidated proposal” — what the president is releasing Monday, the senior administration official said.

Obama “hopes the Republicans will follow suit and come with their own unified proposal,” the official said. “He’ll be open to Republican ideas, and he hopes they’ll be open to ours.”

Tea partiers join mainstream GOP to foster an uprising against Obama

Emboldened by a belief that their political fortunes are on the rise, conservative activists descended Thursday on the capital city they love to hate, seeking to stoke what they consider a grass-roots uprising against President Obama and Democrats in Congress.

The annual Conservative Political Action Conference was once a venue for the right fringe of the Republican Party, but in recent years it has drawn more mainstream party figures and now provides a stage for presidential aspirants to prove their conservative credentials.

This year’s CPAC, which began Thursday and will run through Saturday, had a festival atmosphere, as thousands of jubilant activists turned the Marriott Wardman Park ballroom into a hive of old-guard conservatives and Don’t Tread on Me “tea partiers” hungry for new leaders and messages that can carry the GOP out of the political wilderness.

It was, in the words of one speaker, “our Woodstock.”

Romney, Brown and Cheney
Featured speakers in the opening session included former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who sought to turn the page on his 2008 presidential campaign by casting himself as a populist and every bit the conservative standard-bearer. He defended the policies of former president George W. Bush and his party’s lockstep opposition to Obama’s agenda, saying that Obama had “failed” and that the Democratic majority in Congress would “soon be out the door.”

“If these liberal neo-monarchists succeed, they will kill the very spirit that has built the nation — the innovating, inventing, creating, independent current that runs from coast to coast,” Romney said. Pounding on the lectern as the audience leapt up, he declared: “And we won’t let ‘em do it.”

The attendees stomped and screamed at the appearance of the surprise guest who introduced Romney: Scott Brown. “I’m the newly elected Republican senator from Massachusetts,” Brown said. “Let me just say that one more time. I am the Republican senator from Massachusetts.”

Former vice president Richard B. Cheney also made an unscheduled appearance, bounding out from behind the dark curtain with his daughter Liz. He received a hero’s welcome, to cries of “Run, Dick, run!”

“Knock it off,” Cheney quipped. “A welcome like that’s almost enough to make me want to run for office, but I’m not gonna do it.”

Presidential hopefuls and firebrands
Since the days of President Richard M. Nixon, CPAC has served as an annual gathering of conservative thinkers. But now it is an important venue for any ambitious Republican, and this year’s agenda features potential presidential hopefuls. In addition to Romney, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Rep. Mike Pence (Ind.) will speak Friday, while former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.) and former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) will speak Saturday, before the results of a presidential straw poll are released. Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin is not expected to attend.

The gathering continues to draw its share of firebrands. Dana Loesch, a St. Louis radio host and a tea party leader there, challenged conservatives to organize in unexpected ways — over burgers and brews at bars where liberals congregate or by starting “flash mobs.” Longtime National Rifle Association leader Wayne LaPierre gave an impassioned tribute to Charlton Heston, the late actor and NRA president.

And at a time of strife within the Republican Party, which lacks a clear national leader and is struggling to unite behind a common agenda as the November midterm elections approach, one theme emerged in each speech Thursday: Attack Obama.

“When it comes to pinning blame, pin the tail on the donkeys,” Romney told the thousands who had gathered for his speech.

Latest darling crowned
By 10:30 a.m., the conservative movement had already seemed to crown its latest darling: Marco Rubio, 38, a son of Cuban immigrants who is running an outsider’s campaign in Florida for U.S. Senate. The audience showered Rubio with applause as he ruminated in a keynote address about American exceptionalism and his own improbable journey.

“It’s sometimes easy to forget how special America really is,” Rubio said, making his debut on the national stage. “But I was raised by exiles, by people who know what it is like to lose their country, by people who have a unique perspective on why elections matter, or lack thereof, by people who clearly understand how different America is from the rest of the world. . . . What makes America great is that there are dreams that are impossible everywhere else but are possible here.”

Rubio is running in a hotly contested GOP primary campaign against Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, a race that has pitted the conservative grass roots, which have embraced Rubio, against the more moderate party establishment.

Before elections, lawmakers pin blame on each other for $1 trillion deficit