TITLE CARD: Spring 2009 

MIKE MYERS, Sr. Adviser to Sen. Kennedy: It became clear that the Republican game plan was going to be just to say no, to deny this president any victories.

JOSHUA GREEN: And McConnell was saying, “Don’t agree to anything. Don’t agree to anything. Keep me informed, but keep talking.”

Rep. NANCY PELOSI: The Republicans were very clever in what they did. They pretended that they were interested in this. I call it the dance of the seven veils. “I’m going to be there, and then I’m not, and I’m going to be there, then I’m not, now you see it, now you don’t.” It was all an illusion.

NARRATOR: However, some Republicans, including the minority whip, Eric Cantor, say there were real disagreements.

ERIC CANTOR: They wanted the government to be a provider in competition with the private sector. And to me, that just didn’t make any sense. And I said if that is the price of collaboration─ I mean, it’s basically saying bipartisanship means my way and nothing else. I said we can’t work like that.

NEWSCASTER: ─members of Congress telling the president to slow down─

NARRATOR: As Congress bickered, Obama could only watch.

JEFF ZELENY, The New York Times: He didn’t carry a big stick. He wasn’t like LBJ, of course, because he hadn’t sort of come up through the ranks of the Senate. But it didn’t seem like he had any leverage or any ability to bring people along.

NARRATOR: And some said the president’s political style didn’t help.

CASSANDRA BUTTS, Dep. White House Counsel: He’s not the person who’s going to be the back-slapper. He’s not an arm-twister. He has people who work with him who are able to do aspects of the role of engagement that he doesn’t necessarily─ that he doesn’t necessarily find a value in himself engaging in.

DAVID MARANISS, The Washington Post: He is not the type of person that can, you know, invite Boehner and the Republicans to dinner at the White House every night and schmooze them, like LBJ or Clinton could. That’s not him. He doesn’t even want to do that. So he has this grander vision of what he is and what the world should be, but that doesn’t mean he can bring other people along with him to that place because he doesn’t have that personality.

NARRATOR: And out in America, right-wing radio was fueling people’s outrage over health care reform.

TALK RADIO: Americans are seriously worried that this is going to seriously destroy the health care their parents─

NARRATOR: They were worried about big government taking away choices.

TALK RADIO: It’s about too much power going to the Federal Government!

TALK RADIO: The whole point of this is get everybody enrolled in the government health care plan.

NARRATOR: Skyrocketing costs.

TALK RADIO: Got a plan that increases deficit spending when we’ve already got trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.

NARRATOR: And Sarah Palin said the government would use “death panels.”

TALK RADIO: She introduced the term “death panels.”

TALK RADIO: You might even say that we got death panels going on here.

NARRATOR: Stoking fears that Obama’s plan would let Americans die to save money.

TALK RADIO: ─allegation arose out of an idea to allow─

PETE ROUSE: The charges made against health reform, like death panels, to many of us seemed so ridiculous and so absurd that we probably didn’t take it as seriously soon enough,

TALK RADIO: We now have leftist radicals in charge of your health care decisions, rather than doctors! We’re hanging by a thread!