We had a Bassmasters fishing tournament here this weekend (believe it or not, the winner got $100,000 – who knew?), which fit right in with weekend national politics. Like a fish tossed on the deck, the Obama administration flopped and flailed, gasping for air as it tried to figure out how to cave in to Republicans, Blue Dogs, and the insurance industry (more than they’ve already caved) while still declaring victory.

On Saturday, the President – who once said we’d get Single Payer health care, but we had to take back the House, Senate, and White House first – told a town hall meeting:

“All I’m saying is, though, that the public option, whether we have it or we don’t have it, is not the entirety of health care reform.

On Sunday, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said, “eh, public option, public schmoption; we don’t need no steenking public option.” But also on Sunday, press secretary Robert Gibbs, on Faze the Nation, said Obama still supports a “public option.” Not exactly a bold statement. Now, something like, “the President will veto any legislation that doesn’t include a non-crippled public option,” that would be bold (how about something even bolder, like “we’ll veto anything that preserves the corrupt, for-profit medical-insurance-pharmaceutical industrial complex, and will settle for nothing short of universal single payer health care for all) .

The rest of the day, various administration lackeys were trotted out to basically say the same thing, “yes, we’re ready to cave in, but Sebelius wasn’t supposed to come out and say it.”

I knew Obama wasn’t a progressive, but I didn’t think he was a coward, and he’s certainly acting in a cowardly way on health care. Or maybe he thought if played nice, the Republicans would play nice, too. If that’s the case, then he’s not as smart as I thought he was. What we need here is an LBJ type that can twist arms, bribe, threaten, and do whatever it takes to ram his legislation through a Democratically controlled Congress.

What we appear to have, unfortunately, is Neville Chamberlain.

We went from “yes we can,” to “maybe we can,” to “oh, c’mon guys, pleeeeze?”

And for all your political backpedaling and appeasement, the Republicans aren’t being any nicer to you, are they, Mr. President? They’ve been playing you like a 15 pound bass on a 10 pound line*. Once you’re finally exhausted, they’ll pull what’s left of your limp presidency out of the water, and toss it on the deck, gasping for political life. Then you’ll wish you really were from Kenya.

Maybe you need to go out and invade something (just make it some place easy, like Grenada).

*Note, I don’t actually know anything about fishing, so that may not make any sense.