Summit or not, live-on-TV session to hash out health care plan unusual, and understandably so

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Summit or not, live-on-TV health session unusual

WASHINGTON — Call it a summit, a forum or a conference, President Barack Obama loves to bring together government officials and others to spend hours talking through thorny issues, often with cameras welcome.

In January, Obama hosted the White House Forum on Modernizing Government, in which 50 CEOS came in to talk with federal officials about ways to use streamline government operations and improve efficiency. It was streamed live on the Internet.

In December, he held a Forum on Jobs and Economic Growth, in which top administration officials met with business, labor and nonprofit leader and “thinkers” to talk about ways to get people back to work. It was also streamed live on the Internet.

And then there was last summer’s so-called “beer summit,” when Obama sat down for a cold one with the black professor and white policeman at the center of a national flare-up over race. After a quick photo opportunity, that one was private.

Thursday’s televised health care summit was officially billed as the “bipartisan meeting on health care reform.”

Summit or not, this particular type of gathering — in which the president and a bipartisan group of legislators meet in the public glare to try to hash out agreement on a tough issue — was highly unusual.

“Watching it, you can understand why,” said Brookings Institution scholar Thomas Mann. “Cameras do not facilitate difficult bargaining and compromise, even if the parties were disposed to pursue it.”

At the other end of the transparency spectrum, Obama and other world leaders met in marathon closed-door sessions at the global warming summit in Denmark last December to craft the so-called Copenhagen Accord. The agreement was widely viewed as a disappointment because it contained only voluntary goals for cutting emissions.