your own congressman who s tireless on behalf of working people, dennis kucinich! did you hear that, dennis? say that again. vote yes! someone in the audience saying, vote yes. did the president promise you or give you something, that he would campaign for you, raise money for you? obviously there was a lot of arm twisting going on. did he twist your arm? no. i was trying to convince him while we were on air force one. it wasn t the first meeting we have had. i have had four specific meetings with the president on health care. before that, we campaigned nati nationally together. i understood his position. he wasn t for single payer, but i was trying to use every opportunity i had to impress upon the president the importance of a pakistan option to have amendment to protect the right of states to go to single payer.
he wasn t going to do that. when i finally understood when talking to him and congressional leade leaders, i m faced with i ve got to make a decision here. it s not the bill i would have written. but i have had to make a decision to see if we can move the process beyond where we are right now if this bill succeeds, then i m going to be vitally involved in crafting health care legislation down the road and i m going to do it with the president of the united states. very quickly, you said you didn t want to see the obama presidency destroyed if this bill doesn t pass. do you think it would destroy the presidency if it doesn t pass? i think there s a lot riding on it. absolutely. the president is aware of that and the whole country is. one of the things i m concerned about is that, you know, right from the beginning, his presidency has been under attack and there was an attempt to delegitimatize it. i think that the economy being what it is, people have built so much angst into this h