"Obama's Deal:" A Frontline Documentary Worth Watching
Ken A. Bode
May 4, 2010
I watched "Obama's Deal" for the first time with a note pad at my side as it aired on April 13, three weeks after President Obama signed the health care reform legislation, to which the word "deal" refers in the title.
I was struck at the time by how well the story was told, how much was packed in, how well writer-director Michael Kirk has mastered his documentary storytelling techniques.
For openers Frontline has not resorted to using flibbertigibbet video. The camera is steady, not jumping around, rushing in and out as is now so much the fashion. A viewer is able to absorb and digest a scene without feeling like a leaf in a lettuce spinner.
"Obama's Deal" takes up with the swearing in of President Obama and carries forward through the March 21 House vote that sealed the deal and produced the final health care legislation that Mr. Obama signed.
To carry the inside story that Frontline tells, Mr. Kirk uses background voices under picture -- with little narration -- voices from speeches, congressional hearings, newscasts, cable commentators and, most importantly, from interviews with his own sources. In the background, edging the narrative along, we sometimes hear the recognizable voices of NBC's Brian Williams and ABC's Charles Gibson lifted from newscast along with those of Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck.
A loose central cast of no more than a dozen provides most of the expertise from which the "Obama's Deal" script was fashioned. Among those are Obama advisers Rahm Emanual and Tom Daschle; Republican Senators Charles Grassley and Orrin Hatch, and journalists like Cici Connnally of the Washington Post and Peter Baker of the New York Times, who covered the story. Very prominently included was Karen Ignani, chief lobbyist and prominent spokesperson for the health insurance industry. Ignagni proved to be one of the Administration's most prominent and effective opponents.
Each added some special perspective in the unfolding story and the mix seemed to me to provide a fair representation of both sides. All in all I thought the program was masterfully assembled and told a compelling story.
"Obama's Deal" is the back-story of health care. Viewers get a review of the Clinton health care strategies in the early 90's, and how the Obama team fashioned different approaches. As the story unfolds, it becomes obvious how much Obama wanted a bipartisan bill. In the end it is equally obvious how much of his time and capital he expended on trying, and failing, to get it.
Republican opposition to health care reform solidified during the August 2009 congressional recess when tea party groups began to metamorphasize nationally and locally. The documentary gives a good sense of the anger level at tea party rallies and congressional town hall meetings.
Watching the show a second time on my computer, I was able to pause at tea party rallies and read the signs that otherwise flashed by too quickly. They reveal the depth of anger at President Obama. One placard depicted Obama, naked except for a loin-cloth with a bone through his nose and holding a spear. Another had a picture of Obama with a Hitler moustache with the words "I've changed." Another, "Obamacare is a death sentence. Obama Lies. Grandma Dies!" This section stands alone as insight to the state of the civic dialogue in America today.
A telling moment was seeing Sen. Charles Grassley chief health care negotiator for the Senate GOP, attending a raucous town meeting in Iowa, and later saying, "I've never seen it like this before."
Part of my fascination with "Obama's Deal" was what it reveals about the backroom politics of health care reform. With Ted Kennedy sidelined, fighting cancer, Montana Sen. Max Baucus became the Democrats' chief negotiator. Baucus, far more sympathetic to the health care industry, allows GOP operatives to go through former Majority Leader Tom Daschle's taxes, for example. Daschle was scheduled to be President Obama health care czar, but by uncovering and leaking unpaid tax liabilities, the Republicans forced his withdrawal. "Daschle was taken down in a political knife fight," says a voice in the background.
One of the strongest voices in the film is that of Karen Ignagni, chief lobbyist and prominent spokesperson for the health insurance industry. At a point in the process, the battle for health care really evolved into a fight between the administration and the insurance industry, with each side demonizing the other. Ms. Ignagni is allowed ample exposure in the film to press the industry's side of the story, and she does so convincingly.
When I finished viewing the program the second time, I concluded as professor who has taught both journalism and political science classes, that this would be of tremendous use in a university classroom. It advances the "Who is Obama?" narrative begun by Michael Kirk with his documentary last year which was entitled "Dreams of Obama."
My mind was pretty much made up about "Obama's Deal," when I learned that some viewers thought otherwise. PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler received over 1000 e-mails, many not complimentary.
A common complaint was that the single payer option was sidelined by Frontline. Dr. Margaret Flowers, a member of Physicians for a National Health program, who was interviewed for the program wrote to complain that the only time single payer was presented is when those on the left, outraged at their exclusion, conducted a counter attack by disrupting Sen. Baucus's hearing room and demanding a seat at the table.
Frontline's answer to the many who complained at the absence of the single payer option in the program is that it was never seriously considered by the Administration. In other words single payer -- a Medicare style plan -- was off the table before any deals were considered, therefore not part of "Obama's Deal." True and fair enough, but then I thought about it.
The whole idea of the Frontline program was to roll back the deals behind the deal. To get Joe Lieberman's vote, for example, the Administration had to jettison any public option that would compete with the insurance companies. To win Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson's support they fashioned the Cornhusker Kickback, which is characterized in the film as sleazy, price-is-right kind of politics. As Dr. Flowers notes in her letter, there were 87 co-signers on the single payer bill in the House. In the deal making, when and why did single payer go away?
For supporters of health care, the villain of the piece is Max Baucus, the Montana senator who took over as the Democratic point man on health care while Sen. Ted Kennedy was absent, dying of cancer. Baucus comes off as a captive politician, in the pocket of the heath care industry (from which he received $2.5 million in campaign donations). Baucus, who also comes off as ineffectual and backstabbing declined Frontline's interview request.
In his posting, the PBS Ombudsman thought the program's ending seemed rushed. To me, watching with running time revealed on my computer, I knew the end was near. The voices at the end saying that health care came at the price of Mr. Obama's entire first year and ended in a spirit of rigid partisanship, drew an appropriate conclusion -- along with the question of how it will sell in 2012.
I assume I know why it ended with the March 21 House vote. Frontline is on once a week, and there is only so much flexibility in moving programs around to alternative airdates. As the battle over health care progressed, who knew when it would come to a vote, if ever? I would have liked to see more about the reconciliation process and the changes negotiated there. Heck, I would have liked to see another half-hour of this documentary, but that's not the way it works.
As it turned out, the mid-April air date was timely, lucky to be in such close proximity to the passage of health care. Health care was still very much in the news. Several state attorneys general announced their suit against Obamacare. Tea partiers were mobilizing again, this time for the fall elections.
With an April 13 air date, it is understandable that anything occurring after the House vote was too close to deadline to be squeezed in. Frontline documentaries aren't turned around in a day or a week. At some point the curtain has to come down if you're going to get a finished product by airtime.
One more point. The guy with the biggest beef about how he was treated in "Obama's Deal" is the fellow who negotiated the "Cornhusker Kickback," Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson. I think Sen. Ben Nelson had a very valid compliant. Frontline researchers never contacted him and simply reported on the Cornhusker Kickback using the negative characterizations of its opponents.
Mr. Nelson's spokesman, Jake Thompson, complained this treatment contributed to the widespread impression that his boss had voted for health care as a result of a deal for the federal government to pick up $100 million in Nebraska Medicaid funding.
Mr. Thompson points out this provision was never intended to be an earmark for Nebraska alone. It was instead a place-holder in the Senate bill intended as an opt-in provision for all states or a means to later fight against the unfunded mandate. You wouldn't have known that from "Obama's Deal", but you also probably would not have known it from the media coverage at the time the deal went down.
Frontline responded quickly and appropriately to Sen. Nelson's criticism, with an expanded explanation on its website and a promise to reflect the Senator's position on the version of the program streamed on its website and in any future broadcasts of "Obama's Deal."
