Jen, the best part of Brooks’s V8 moment is the line about how Obama really could have changed Washington if the poor, innocent creature didn’t get “so sucked into the system…”

This is a misreading of reality on at least two fronts. First, Obama didn’t get sucked into anything. Upon taking office he decided to put health-care reform in the hands of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. They’d do all the boring process work and he would make the dazzling prime-time pitches. Second, once that plan failed, the president threw his weight behind a campaign that seeks to subvert the “system.” The misuse of reconciliation and the Slaughter Rule don’t represent Washington business as usual. The president’s anti-comprehension of the bill’s contents is not just how things always work in D.C. Collectively, it all constitutes a hijacking of the system.

The much-derided system was about to halt this runaway train. Yet, here we are. The system is imperfect; what’s happening now is obscene.

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