Tomorrow, Obama Validates Presidency

When the right and left can't even agree on which St. Joseph had his feast day yesterday, "the moral is that nothing about health care reform is easy," writes Gail Collins in the New York Times. "Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing." Yet against all odds, we sit on the eve of "this huge, complicated, controversial reform," and with that, she contends, "Barack Obama will have validated his presidency."

With reps still clamoring for concessions, Obama invited the entire Democratic caucus to the White House today, "the worst way to spend your weekend in the history of the world." But over the course of a year, and with his own party "begging him to drop health care," Collins writes that Obama "stuck to his guns. Speech after speech, phone call after phone call, sit-down with one frightened or greedy or confused legislator after another, he kept on the case. 'Do not quit. Do not give up,' he told yet another rally yesterday. 'We are going to get this done.' " Tomorrow, we'll see.
(More health care reform stories.)