FRONTLINE: 'Obama's Deal'

At Boston Globe, "From Behind Closed Doors, High-Stakes Victory":

It’s hard to remember a piece of federal legislation since the civil rights bills of the ’60s that has rocked this country as has the leviathan health care bill that President Obama signed on March 23. It’s hard to remember anything since then to match the congressional bloodletting the bill caused, or its lasting national significance. Its passage saved Obama’s presidency and recalibrated the political calculus in Washington, which had been based on its assumed defeat.

If we are dim on all that’s in the bill, we were blind to the machinations behind the scenes that led to its rise and fall and rise again. To achieve victory, Obama had to cut unsavory deals. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked. Anyone remotely interested in big-time, hardball legislative politics should watch “Obama’s Deal’’ tonight at 9 on WGBH-TV (Channel 2) to see how the president got his bill.

“Frontline’’ delivers the goods. It gives us the large themes and nasty fights that dominated Capitol Hill over the past year. We hear from a legion of smart insiders, journalists, and politicians, from every angle of the action. Veteran documentarian Mike Kirk, who wrote, directed, and coproduced this story, has done it again.

The deals really were ugly. One involved an $80 billion closed-door pact between Obama and the top pharmaceutical industry lobbyist, a pact to lower drug costs that critics charge was entirely too soft on the industry. Then came the $100 million deal to benefit Senator Ben Nelson’s home state of Nebraska to secure his vote.

The threads in this story are fascinating ...

A little too sympathetic of a review.

Here's hoping Frontline's program is less so. The website is here.