Bipartisanship

The upcoming bipartisan day of negotiation regarding health care reform has sparked some interesting conversation about what bipartisanship really is.

The Republican leadership has requested the Democrats start from a clean slate by throwing out the existing bills that have been passed by both chambers of Congress.
 Otherwise, the negotations are just an act of theater to be played out in front of the cameras so the Democrats can say to the country "See, we negotiated!" and then go ahead and pass the bill they were going to pass, regardless.

The Democratic leadership is saying "Look, you wanted cameras, we've got C-SPAN; you wanted to be able to participate, here's your chance."

I think both sides have a point, but neither side really means what they say anyway.  Both sides are trying to reach their goal by manipulating the optics the situation.  Democrats seem to think they can get the bill passed by making it look like they tried to work with Republicans, to be bipartisan.  Republicans seem to think they can kill the bill by obstructing the process, and therefore give Democrats a big "fail" on achieving health care reform.

At this point, I don't see either side getting a big win out of the negotiation, no mattter how it goes down.  The biggest news to me at this point is that there is apparently a single health care reform proposal that has been produced by the White House in advance of the meeting.  I think this will work to galvanize the Democrats behind a plan, which seems to have been the main problem all along.  They have a large majority in the Senate and the House.  They can pass a bill if they want to.  If this plan can bring the party together behind a single plan, I think they'll get it done.