Still, the image remains. The media has apparently discovered that we have troops in Afghanistan. This may come as a shock to some, since the mainstream media (at least on television) have pretty much ignored this fact for around seven years now (so much so that Afghanistan became known as "the forgotten war" for a while). But the reporting on what President Obama is going to do next in Afghanistan has been so over-the-top in the past few weeks, it has astonished me (and I do not astonish easily, especially when it comes to the idiocy of the evening news). More stories have run on Afghanistan, I would be willing to venture, in the past two weeks than have run in the past two years.

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[Note: This column originally ran August 17, 2009. I don't usually re-run columns (and never so soon after their original appearance), but after watching the debut of Ken Burn's "The National Parks: America's Best Idea" last night, I had to dig this out. I strongly encourage everyone to watch the rest of Burns' series, which is running all week long on your local PBS station. I also strongly urge everyone to visit our National Parks, as well. This column was written just after a road trip I took this summer, and just after President Obama had visited Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon.]

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The horse-trading has begun in earnest on the healthcare reform front in Congress. The sausage-making currently going on in the House and Senate has somewhat of a "through the microscope" quality to it, but it's interesting to highlight a few stories from this week for a peek into what the final legislation may look like. This will, necessarily, be an incomplete look, so I warn you in advance there won't be any sweeping conclusions at the end of the article. Consider it merely a snapshot of where things stand this week. Or two snapshots, since we'll look at each house separately.

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The chattering classes inside the Washington Beltway have decided amongst themselves that when all else fails, they can always revert to their "least common denominator" story about President Barack Obama -- that he is in danger of being "overexposed." You don't have to look very far to find this viewpoint on television, in print, or on the radio. It's like talking about the weather, for the political punditocracy. There's only one problem -- there's not a shred of evidence to back up the idea that President Obama using the bully pulpit (as often as he likes) is somehow a bad thing for him. But that doesn't stop it from being talked about endlessly, whenever Obama is in the same Zip code as a news camera.

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How time flies. This column marks its second anniversary today, by the calendar if not the Volume number. For the second straight year, we only produced 47 columns, but by the calendar we've gone two full years and a few odd days. Actually, now that I think of it, more than just a few odd days. Ahem.

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Senator Max Baucus has released (finally!) his Senate committee's healthcare reform bill. This was supposed to be the "bipartisan" bill, but the only way it can truly be referred to as "bipartisan" is in the growing bipartisan distaste for the bill. Which was not the intent. But, while the mainstream media has been borderline obsessive over Baucus and his Gang and his bill, the real question over Baucus' ultimate meaning to the healthcare reform debate is whether he'll be named to the conference committee between House and Senate whose purpose it will be to hash out the final language, and (if so named) what Baucus will do there.

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This is due to the fact that political discussions in America are fast becoming solely theological in nature. Allow me to explain this concept. Each side has their beliefs. Each has their tenets which they fervently defend. Much of this is done on faith. And, when your entire world view is radically different than the person you're arguing with, there is very little chance of either agreement or mind-changing. It's like the Jews and the Muslims arguing not over where the boundaries of Israel and Palestine are, but over whether Moses or the Prophet were right. In other words, it is like just about every disagreement over religion you can think of -- from all of history. If my core beliefs do not agree in a factual way with your core beliefs, then we can discuss things up to a point, but once we both hit that point then we just stop listening to each other, and begin talking past each other instead. Or, even worse, shouting at each other.

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We speak today not of Valerie Plame Wilson's husband Joseph, but instead a different "Joe Wilson" in the world of politics. This particular Joe is a representative from South Carolina. This Joe was rude to the president last night during his speech in the House chamber by yelling out: "You lie!" There were other similar grumblings and outright heckling from the Republican side of the aisle last night, but none of the rest were as loud and clear on the microphones as Wilson. By his volume and clarity, he elected himself poster boy for the disrespect shown by members of Congress for the president. The other voices in the crowd will likely be swept aside, as everyone in the media and in politics focuses on Joe as the designated heckler of the night.

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President Obama's speech to a joint session of Congress on healthcare reform needed to be a game-changer of a speech. That, it seemed was just about the only thing everyone could agree upon before the speech. Everyone -- even conservatives -- were saying Obama had to either take control of the process or watch it slip away from him. Of course, after the speech, we'll all go right back to disagreeing with each other about whether (or how much) the game was changed, and whether the changes are good things or bad. Such is the nature of politics.

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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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