Krugman today:

When it comes to domestic policy, there are two Barack Obamas.

On one side there’s Barack the Policy Wonk, whose command of the issues — and ability to explain those issues in plain English — is a joy to behold.

But on the other side there’s Barack the Post-Partisan, who searches for common ground where none exists, and whose negotiations with himself lead to policies that are far too weak.

What Krugman doesn't say?

There are words; and then there are actions. As a public intellectual, Krugman is naturally taken with mastery of the language, as are the symbol manipulators in the "creative" [cough] "class"; and even formerly creative unterbussen like me can still get a thrill when Obama expresses an idea concisely and eloquently.

However, words are merely air: You can't eat them, you can't heat the house with them, you can't fill the tank with them, and you can't take them to the doctor when you're sick. So, the millions of us here under the bus need more than words: We need action. And over and over and over again, Obama falls short on action -- the bridge between words and action being precisely detail, the "How are you going to get this done?" Policy detail being precisely what Obama has always been notably light on.

Seriously, can we take a step back here and note the ludicrous situation "victory" in 2008 has placed us all in? Krugman again:

It would be a crushing blow to progressive hopes if Mr. Obama doesn’t succeed in getting some form of universal care through Congress. But even so, reform isn’t worth having if you can only get it on terms so compromised that it’s doomed to fail.

That's the position we're in. It's actually possible that Obama's FKDP is going to exhibit a total lack of win and leave us worse off. Think about that.

So Mr. Obama and Democrats in Congress have to hang tough — no more gratuitous giveaways in the attempt to sound reasonable. And reform advocates have to keep up the pressure to stay on track. Yes, the perfect is the enemy of the good; but so is the not-good-enough-to-work. Health reform has to be done right.

That's the position we're in. That after a victory hailed as landslide, and after "winning" control of both the house and the Senate*, Krugman feels he has to write:

So Mr. Obama and Democrats in Congress have to hang tough

"They have to hang tough." Didn't they win the fucking election?

Of course, if Obama had crafted a legitimate health care policy process, instead of claiming the process was open and transparent, and then excluding and censoring single payer advocates, we might be in a better place today. We might be in a place where the left could "make him do it" instead of depending on whatever form of 11-dimensional chess is playing out in Obama's mind to issue forth in policy detail that actually does hang tough. And Obama's a very bright man, so you can be sure that if that's what he wanted, that would be how he commissioned the kabuki script to be written.

And of course, if our career liberals and "progressive" bloggers weren't enabling Obama's vagueness on policy detail by defining the left edge of acceptable discourse as a "public option" (or is it "plan") that doesn't have any detail either, we might be in "make him do it" mode there, too. As it is, all that whipping for an ill-defined public option will do is set Obama up to claim that something as bogus as a health insurance exchange is the "public" "plan" and who's to say he's not wrong?** Although, if you factor out the FAIL, it's always possible to claim success, much as an sundial might claim success for moving the sun with its shadow. There's that. And again, Obama's a very bright man, so you can be sure that this is how he commissioned the kabuki script to be written.

Sweet suffering Jeebus, how is it that we're even in the position where Krugman has to say "Health reform has to be done right"? That we are.... Well, that shows "audacity" indeed. I'll grant that. Just not in the form that so many of us, er, hoped for.

NOTE * Bill Moyers in Salon:

In 2003, a young Illinois state senator named Barack Obama told an AFL-CIO meeting, "I am a proponent of a single-payer universal healthcare program."

Single payer. Universal. That's health coverage, like Medicare, but for everyone who wants it. Single payer eliminates insurance companies as pricey middlemen. The government pays care providers directly. It's a system that polls consistently have shown the American people favoring by as much as 2-to-1.

There was only one thing standing in the way, Obama said six years ago: "All of you know we might not get there immediately because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate and we have to take back the House."

OK, we did that. We did that. And we got? Aside from the empty calories of going to house parties and filling out surveys that the administration ignores?

NOTE ** If you look at Hamsher's Principles of the Public Option, you could fit any kind of bogosity under them that you wanted, including coops and a health care exchange, depending on how you craft the legislation. That's why vague principles are for. Single payer advocates, of course, don't have that problem, since HR676 is already crafted. Too bad the progressives can't bring themselves to whip for it to be CBO scored.