As Politico reports, Obama tip-toed up to an admission of error in the health-care debate and then, realizing what he had done, reverted to form, blaming the scoundrels in Congress. First, the feint:

“We had to make so many decisions quickly in a very difficult set of circumstances that after awhile, we started worrying more about getting the policy right than getting the process right,” Obama told ABC’s Diane Sawyer Monday. “But I had campaigned on process—part of what I had campaigned on was changing how Washington works, opening up, transparency. … The health care debate as it unfolded legitimately raised concerns not just among my opponents, but also amongst supporters that we just don’t know what’s going on. And it’s an ugly process and it looks like there are a bunch of back room deals.”

Then the passivity (“The process didn’t run the way I ideally would like it to and that we have to move forward in a way that recaptures that sense of opening things up more”) — as he suggested the “process” ran itself or that his own spokesperson was doing someone else’s bidding when he refused to respond to queries about the broken C-SPAN pledge. And finally the finger-pointing:

“Let’s just clarify. I didn’t make a bunch of deals,” Obama told ABC. “There is a legislative process that is taking place in Congress and I am happy to own up to the fact that I have not changed Congress and how it operates the way I would have liked.”

It’s a bit pathetic, the inability to simply say what everyone knows to be the case: The deal was unpopular and unworkable. Bribes were needed to lure wary lawmakers. The White House cheered the process on and defended the result. The White House spokesperson refused to even answer questions on the lack of transparency. The net result was to further undermine support for his signature piece of legislation and give Scott Brown one more reason for Massachusetts to make him the 41st vote against ObamaCare. To make matters worse, as the report notes, some of those deals were made directly by the White House. (“As the process unfolded last year, critics complained not just about closed Congressional negotiations on health care, but about deals the White House worked out behind closed doors with pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, hospitals and unions.”)

All in all, it’s what we’ve come to expect from Obama, who ran as a new-style politician and is proving to be a drearily familiar old-style one.