At the National Press Club today, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele unveiled a new television ad opposing President Obama’s plan for a government-run health-care system. The ad will run in Arkansas, Nevada, and North Dakota. (Hint, hint, Reps. Mike Ross, Marion Berry, Vic Snyder, Shelley Berkley, Dina Titus, and Earl Pomeroy, and Sens. Mark Pryor, Blanche Lincoln, Harry Reid, Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan.)

(The focus on risk strikes me as a strange inversion of the roles from the 2000 campaign, when Al Gore denounced George W. Bush’s tax-cut proposals as a “risky tax scheme” while Bush shot back, “If he had been there when Edison was testing the light bulb, it would have been a risky anti-candle scheme.” I wonder if we’ll see Obama adopt Bush’s words that the opposition practices “the politics of the roadblock, the philosophy of the stop sign.”)

Of course, the problem is not merely that the plan has risks. The current conglomeration of proposals is contradictory. Yesterday on Meet the Press, when asked about controlling costs, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius responded: “The president has a proposal that he hopes will be incorporated where MedPAC, an independent group of providers, will help to lower the Medicare costs long-term. But he’s very committed to this, and I think it will be part of the package going forward.” Except that ditching MedPAC was key to bringing on the support of the American Medical Association.

So the bill will be better at controlling costs as soon as the administration abandons the compromise that secured the backing of the largest group of doctors in the country. You can have one, or the other, but not both.