Whenever President Obama faces a tough political situation, he rescues himself with a big speech. That's what he'll try to do next week with a prime-time address on health care to a joint session of Congress.
White House aides tell Mike Allen that Obama's speech "will leave his audience with a CLEAR sense of what he wants. He's not going to issue legislative language, which would annoy the chairmen who've been working on this for month. But the West Wing knows the press would pan the speech if he just reformatted what he's already said."
"So a speechwriting team led by Jon Favreau, with heavy input from David Axelrod, will flesh out an outline that one aide compared to chapter titles -- a specific checklist for reform. Although presidential joint sessions on specific topics have been rare in recent years (Clinton on health care, Bush after 9/11), over the years the LBJ did one on race, Gerald Ford did one on the economy, Carter did one on energy, Reagan did one on inflation in his first year."
First Read: "The joint session, of course, will likely feature one side of the chamber -- the Democrats -- constantly applauding President Obama's speech, and another side -- the Republicans -- sitting on their hands. Indeed, the president's true audience for this joint session probably isn't most Republicans, who have been unwilling so far to work with the White House. Nor is his real audience the American public, which is increasingly skeptical about the legislation emerging from Congress. Rather, the folks whom Obama really be will addressing on Wednesday are the Democratic senators and members of Congress, plus Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. Those are the true players in this debate who will decide the fate of the health-care legislation."
