Seib today:

Among the many problems President Barack Obama confronts on the health-care front, one is fairly simple. He is defending a plan that doesn’t really exist.
It may be time for the White House to change that. As the president and his administration figure out how to hit the reset button on health at the close of a bruising August, one option is to, at last, lay out exactly what Mr. Obama now wants in an overhaul package, and start selling and defending that.
No less a legislative master than former Republican Senate leader Robert Dole is suggesting that course, and it may be the best idea available as Washington returns from an uneasy summer break.
As a matter of political and legislative strategy, the White House has never actually presented an “Obama health-care bill.” As in the earlier quest for an economic-stimulus package, it chose instead to enunciate some general principles and let Congress craft the actual legislation. Four committees have done so, and a fifth is trying.
The reasoning was fairly simple: As soon as there is a presidential bill, it becomes the target of all attacks. There also is a historical reason to avoid presenting a specific bill. President Bill Clinton offered an (overly) detailed health plan in 1993, and his critics picked it apart, chart by chart and page by page. That wasn’t a path the Obama White House was going to travel.
But in recent weeks the downsides of that strategy have become clear. The absence of an actual Obama health plan hasn’t stopped Republicans from attacking as if there was one anyway and convincing many Americans they are opposed to it.
And, because he hasn’t said precisely what he will and won’t accept, Mr. Obama has been in the awkward position of having to defend virtually every idea congressional committees have thrown out — some of which, one suspects, the president actually doesn’t think are all that worthy of defense. He has been out there defending surtaxes on wealthier Americans he never asked for, deeper Medicare spending reductions than he has sought and a government-run insurance option he may or may not be wedded to.
That is a tall order. It is likely the administration’s original strategy was to stay out of the nitty-gritty until both the House and Senate had passed something, and then move in when those bills hit a conference committee. That hasn’t happened, of course, and there is now a need to restart the conversation rather than simply continue the argument.
Right now the administration, and all of Washington, seems to be waiting for the Senate Finance Committee, the last committee where there is a real effort to find something Republicans can support, to come up with its plan by mid-September. But even then, the president will need to step in to stop further deterioration.
There is less and less evidence that any Republicans are prepared to sign on, but the president still might be well served by calling in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, laying out for them what the White House wants to support at this point, and using that to rally Democrats.