The prez is withholding final judgment, he says, until his people have checked out the fine print. He's asked Donna Shalala and Bruce Reed to be his chief scrutineers. Shalala is Secretary of Health and Human Services, Reed is the chief White House domestic policy adviser. Good for her. But this one's too big, too complicated, to be left to your basic bureaucrat.
Special times call for special talents.
The prez needs people who can find the loopholes, who can spot every exploitable jot and tittle and see how people with a certain nasty tilt of mind might take advantage. After all, if there's even a silly millimeter of wiggle room left in that settlement, Big Tobacco's lawyers are going to drive a truck through it. No doubt about it. So what the prez needs right now is creative people. Creative and devious people.