After Labor day, Senate leaders will review their options including a 60% chance to use the split-bill tactic. Democrats also have intraparty differences. Liberals call it a "public option", the White House calls it a "preferred option" and the Finance Committee calls it a "bad idea". Whatever it is called, there will be little, if any, Republican support.
Showing wisdom like King Solomon, Obama's Rx is to "cut the bill in two" and proceed under the reconciliation process that lets legislation pass with a filibuster-proof 51 votes.
And now, in Obama's own political world, here will come Robert Gibbs, White House Press Secretary, with the official spin to this story, "In what is surely a tribute for Obama's bold decision, voters will reward Obama with reelection as he rules "with wisdom and discernment in great measure, with understanding as vast as the sands of the seashore" and that quote comes right out of the Bible, so you can really believe it!"
So, the Judgment of Solomon, it turns out, should be held up not as a paradigm of splitting the difference but of using political maneuvering to flush out posturing and do what's right. If that happens, then the term can be used in the sense of its dictionary definition—"showing wisdom or discernment." But until then, we shouldn't dress up Obama's compromise as the Judgment of Solomon when, in the end, it's just politics as usual, again.
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