In Health Care Message War, It's Obama Vs. Massa

WASHINGTON (March 9) -- Democrats sent two distinct messages yesterday as they campaigned for a final vote on a health care overhaul.

One came from President Barack Obama, who urged a university crowd near Pennsylvania -- and, implicitly, members of Congress -- to forget the risky politics and vote for reform. The Washington "echo chamber," the president said, "is telling members of Congress, 'Wait, think about the politics' -- instead of thinking about doing the right thing." Reprising a line from his health care speech last week, he concluded: "I don't know how passing health care will play politically, but I do know that it's the right thing to do."

The other Democratic health care message of the day was a stark contrast to Obama's. It came from now-former Rep. Eric Massa, who angrily told a New York radio show that the White House's push for a comprehensive reform was all about the politics. The upstate New York congressman resigned his office at 5 p.m. Monday amid allegations he sexually harassed a male staffer.

Massa is not going quietly. In the interview with WKPQ 105.3 FM, he accused the White House of forcing him out of office not because of his alleged misbehavior but because he opposed the health care legislation, since his departure means House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will need one less vote to secure passage of the bill.

"I was set up for this from the very, very beginning," Massa said. "You think that somehow they didn't come after me to get rid of me because my vote is the deciding vote in the health care bill? Then, ladies and gentlemen, you live today in a world that is so innocent as to not understand what's going on in Washington, D.C."

Massa assailed Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, as the "son of the devil's spawn."

"He is an individual who would sell his mother to get a vote," Massa said. "He would strap his children to the front end of a steam locomotive."

The colorful ex-congressman recalled an incident in which he said Emanuel accosted him over a vote in the House gym shower, when Massa was "naked as a jaybird" and Emanuel stood "not even with a towel wrapped around his tush."

For a president already facing an opposition party determined to derail his health care bill, Massa could be the biggest threat yet. He is a Democrat against the bill, and a man with nothing left to lose -- he is resigning his seat, and in addition to the harassment charge, Massa has said he was diagnosed with a likely terminal recurrence of cancer.

And while Obama is trying to sell health care reform in moral terms as a question of right versus wrong, Massa is providing the details for a portrait of Emanuel as kneecapping political operative that has been sketched out in three lengthy profiles in the last week. Just as the president blames the culture of Washington for the opposition to his plan, Massa says it is that very same hyperpoliticized attitude, espoused by Obama's top lieutenant, that tried to force him to support the reform bill and punished him when he didn't.

Oddly, although Massa represented a Republican-leaning district that elected him for the first time in 2008, he opposed the health care bill from the left, saying it did not go far enough. But as he characterizes the White House operation, a no vote is a no vote.

And Massa seems to have plenty more he wants to say. After lashing out on a local radio show over the weekend, he is scheduled to go national Tuesday: appearing for a full hour with Obama's bete noir himself, Glenn Beck.