This week's column

My latest column was published in the print edition of the Opelika-Auburn News today.

I usually wait for the news staff to publish the column on the web -- and because of weekend staff changes, that usually happens on Monday -- but because of late-breaking developments related to the piece, I decided to go ahead and post it in its entirety here.

Keep in mind that because of deadlines, I wrote this over the course of about two hours beginning at about 11 p.m. Thursday.

My comments regarding the late-breaking developments will follow in a subsequent post.

After more than two years of near-constant discussion on the stump, in legislative committees and in raucous town hall meetings across America, the U.S. House of Representatives appears to be within hours of passing the Senate's sweeping changes to American health insurance laws.

President Obama, whose remarkable political disengagement from the process throughout 2009 contributed to the mess the issue became, has delayed a planned trip to Asia to see the bill through.

If the House does, in fact, pass the legislation tomorrow or Monday, as even Republican opponents now believe it will, and the president signs it into law, the evolution of how the effort will have gotten there from appearing to flatline on the election of Republican U.S. Sen. Scott Brown in Massachusetts will be one of the unlikeliest in American political history.

Just as reconciliation was burned into the rank-and-file citizen’s lexicon at the end of 2009, so the endgame for this bill will be an introduction to another little-known, little-understood legislative maneuver: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to ride the bill to victory on a resolution that the bill will be “deemed to have passed” by the House.

It is, perhaps, the only way this bill could get done. The approach, described as legislative “gymnastics” by one GOP lawmaker, allows Pelosi to get the bill through without subjecting her reluctant colleagues to a difficult up-or-down vote. Members would only take a recorded vote for the fixes they want on it.

The process is well established within the rules of the House. And though Republicans and opposing Democrats are right that it’s almost never used to pass major, controversial legislation, they can do little more than gripe about it.

So for President Obama, “deemed to have passed” is the equivalent of a political elixir after a long, hard year of policy heartburn: It will bring relief, and victory, even if it tastes a bit sour going down.

But is it really the panacea Democrats need to right their ship ahead of what they even anticipate will be a rocky midterm season?

In taking the “deemed to have passed” gamble, they are banking on two things: Quick turnaround and fresh air.

Democrats say that many of the insurance reforms -- including subsidies to help small businesses meet the new federal mandate, requirements that all new insurance policies offer free preventative care and the elimination of lifetime or annual caps on coverage -- will take effect within the first year. President Obama hopes this quick turnaround of benefits will somehow assuage voter rage, especially in swing districts, over the contentious and irregular circumstances of the bill’s passage.

Once he signs the bill, the president is counting on fresh air in D.C. -- that is, an atmosphere of governance that isn’t punctuated at every turn by conjecture about whether his primary domestic initiative will go down in flames. He can turn his complete attention to the economy without having to look like he gave up on his biggest goal.

Of course, other factors will impact Democrats’ prospects in November. These include but are not limited to their ability to convince Americans that they are responding effectively on the economy, what happens on the national security front and whether Republicans are able to keep Tea Party activists from splitting the GOP.

But the Democrats’ die will be cast in largest part by the gamble the president is taking in ramming this bill through.

This weekend’s vote is at once, then, both the last step in a long push for health insurance reform and the first toward determining whether President Obama’s first administration will be his last.