President Barack Obama will address Congress and the nation this Wednesday night on the subject of healthcare reform. What he'll say is anyone's guess, at this point. Which (by the way) is exactly the problem he's trying to fix. Nobody's really sure what Obama will fight for, and what he will toss overboard in the name of political expediency. Even staunch Obama supporters would be hard-pressed to say, right now, what Obama will say in his speech this Wednesday. But whatever he says, one fact remains crystal-clear: Obama has got to be specific in his speech, or else the healthcare reform effort may collapse of its own weight soon after. And by being specific, Obama's got to start taking some things off the table. If Obama attempts more lofty (but detail-free) rhetoric, and does not (his other favorite metaphor for this situation) "draw bright lines in the sand," then he is going to disappoint a lot of people who voted for him because they thought he would be a good leader.

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Perhaps President Obama thought his address to the nation's schoolchildren would generate a similar touching moment with parents across the country. But instead, it has become yet another target for his political opponents (as if they didn't already have enough fronts in this battle). Sadly, the event has become mired in manufactured controversy from the right, with typical sky-is-falling rhetoric about how the evil, evil man who occupies the Oval Office is going to brainwash all of our children into being either: (a) Marxists, (b) Socialists, (c) Obamamaniacs, or (d) all of the above. No matter that presidents have been doing this sort of heartwarming photo-oppery since the time of Kennedy (do some pushups, children!), and that Saint Ronald of Reagan actually used such an address to children to hawk his tax cuts. No, none of this matters, because... well, to tell you the truth, it's hard to figure what some of these people are thinking.

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So, with the standard disclaimer aside, we can delve in to Obama's poll numbers for August. The news for Obama fans continues to be bad, unfortunately. There may be a faint glimmer of a spark of hope in the numbers -- but that's about all I can promise here, sorry about that. Obama's approval numbers continued their downward trend this month, and his disapproval numbers also increased. We'll go into these numbers in detail, up front.

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So here is where we find ourselves -- in a recent CBS poll, two-thirds of the respondents said the current ideas proposed for healthcare were confusing. This is why Obama wanted just two bills to have emerged from Congress at this point -- to lessen this confusion. But this is also largely due to the Democrats utter lack of being to explain themselves coherently, it should also be pointed out.

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Republicans, masters of chutzpah that they are, have launched a pre-emptive strike against "politicizing" Senator Edward Kennedy's funeral with unseemly Democratic ideals. This should be so ridiculous as to endanger Americans' health from side-splitting laughter, but (Democrats being Democrats) it might just work.

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And this November the torch will be passed again to a new generation of Americans, so with Barack Obama and for you and for me, our country will be committed to his cause. The work begins anew. The hope rises again. And the dream lives on.

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In the calendar of politics, throughout the year, the label "Take Out The Trash Day" is attached by the media to Fridays. Late Friday afternoon (or even evening, after the national television news deadline), the White House releases news that they'd really rather just ignore -- and would be very happy if everyone else ignored as well. There's a good reason for this timing: Friday evening (and Saturday as well) is the time of week when the least amount of the public is paying attention to the news. Meaning that embarrassing or awkward stories can be released with the fewest possible ripples in the body politic's attention. But this concept sometimes broadens to encompass an entire week. With Congress, the president, and what the White House hopes is a maximum amount of the public all on vacation this week, it seems to be the time to toss a few news stories over the wall, in the hopes that they'll get less attention than normal.

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Would the Democratic Party, and Senate Democrats in particular, be better off if current Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid loses his re-election bid next year? This is a provocative question, but it is now one that needs consideration, since Reid's poll numbers in his own state remain so dismal. The possibility of Reid becoming only the second Majority Leader since the 1950s to lose his own seat (Daschle was the other one) is looking more and more like the safe bet (to put it in gambling-friendly Nevada terms, as it were). Which leads to the question of what impact this will have on the Senate, what impact on the Democratic Party, and what impact on the country at large.

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President Obama stunned the political world today by announcing he will switch political parties, and soon become a Republican. "It seems the only way we're going to get bipartisanship in this town is if I lead the way," he said, in brief remarks before leaving for vacation. "The Republicans have refused to work with me because I'm a Democrat, and Republicans' biggest strength has always been the ability to fall into line with whatever their leaders tell them, unlike other certain unnamed political parties in America..." (the president appeared to cough several times at this point, although one of his coughs sounded suspiciously like the word "Democrats," if truth be told...). The president, clear-throated now, continued, "So I will now be the leader of the Republican Party, and they will fall in line with what I tell them to we're going to do. The Democrats who are interested in bipartisanship can join us to pass Medicare-for-all, instead of the Rube Goldberg machine which they have been attempting to construct."

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This is a tough subject to write about, because Edward "Teddy" Kennedy, brother of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, has served Massachusetts in the United States Senate longer than I've been alive -- almost a half-century. Served, it hardly needs adding, with distinction. His nickname on Capitol Hill these days is "The Lion of the Senate," which just shows the respect and admiration many other politicians feel for the man.

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