The debate about the health care debate

President Obama’s bipartisan health care summit begins later this morning, but the bickering started weeks ago. Arguments between Republicans and Democrats over what kind of table will be used, the seating arrangements, the frequency of coffee breaks and other minutiae are starting to take center stage even before the conversation about whether or how to reform health care.

Darrell West, vice president and director of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, talks about the importance of pageantry in events like this, and whether President Obama can hope to repeat the success he had at a House Republican conference last month in Baltimore. We also have Jonathan Cohn, senior editor for The New Republic, to talk about what he’s expecting from this summit, and what President Obama and the Republicans need to do to actually get things done.