By GORDON OSMOND
Paltalk News Network Contributor

With great fanfare, President Barack Obama announced a new approach to his pet project — health care reform. Later this month, Republican and Democrat leaders will convene at Blair House to approach the issue with more bipartisanship and more transparency. Lest one think that this is a fresh approach, it would be well to remember that it is actually nothing more or less than what Obama promised more than a year ago, a year during which the mantra, “But I won,” became the overriding principle in legislative development.

Before concluding that this announcement heralds a new era in the Obama presidency — one which might lead to much needed reform in other areas, such as national security and fiscal policy — it should be kept in mind that health care reform is the one area that is totally and specifically dependent upon congressional, more specifically, senatorial approval. It is not unduly cynical to wonder whether this new approach would have been undertaken if the super majority possessed by the Democrats in the Senate had not been destroyed by an inconvenient junior senator from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Of course, Obama could put the lie to this cynicism by promptly pursuing other corrective action. (The master of multitasking can hardly claim that reforms must be undertaken sequentially.) For example, how about a rational reaction to the terrorists fiascoes? Systemic failures there may have been, but systems have a way of being designed and executed by persons - persons who sometimes do not perform their jobs according to minimum standards. Attorney General Eric Holder should go, and if misery likes company, I can think of no more appropriate companion than Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano.

Obama has claimed that one of his problems has been the classic “lack of communication.” Giving Press Secretary Robert Gibbs the gate would be consistent with this rationale, and even though the “lack of communication” bit is a total scapegoat, firing Gibbs would at least relieve the administration of a bumptious member.

The decisions that Obama makes in these areas in the next weeks will go a long way to determining whether the health care move represents genuine enlightenment or rather nothing more than a politically motivated gambit to salvage the signature cause of his administration.