Setup for healthcare summit seems to be taking priority

Reporting from Washington — 

Forget whether Washington can agree on a healthcare plan at the upcoming summit meeting. In recent days, the real impasse has been over furniture.

As the White House and congressional titans prepare for their meeting Thursday, they are enmeshed in rolling rounds of diplomacy about exactly how the high-stakes event will unfold.

In face-to-face meetings in the Capitol, participants have been discussing the arrangement of tables. U-shaped or square?

Will everyone be able to fit? That has been a sticking point. A Republican aide said the White House had planned to restrict the table to only the handful of officially invited guests, which would have forced some other legislators to sit with staff at what the aide indignantly referred to as “the kiddie table.”

“We’re not going to have members [of Congress] sitting in staff seats,” said the aide, referring to the sideline seats often occupied by aides to powerful officials. The White House said Tuesday that it would find room for everyone.

There’s still the matter of where to sit. Should Democrats and Republicans sit separately? Or in a show of bipartisan comity, should their seats be intermingled? That question still has not been settled.

With a national television audience watching and a major domestic initiative hanging in the balance, logistics are proving to be almost as delicate as negotiations on the issue itself.

“Shades of the Paris peace talks,” said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), invoking Vietnam.

Toward the end of the Vietnam War, diplomats spent weeks in Paris arguing over what they called “the modalities” of peace talks. That is, the shape of the table and the placement of chairs -- issues they considered fraught with symbolism.

In Washington, each party is looking for an edge.

For President Obama, the summit is a chance to revive a healthcare bill that has languished since the Democrats lost their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate last month. Republicans want Obama to scrap existing plans and start fresh.

At minimum, the GOP wants to ensure its lawmakers are on an equal footing at the summit. The party especially hopes to avoid a repeat of the recent House GOP meeting in Baltimore, where Obama stood on stage and Republicans looked up at him from chairs.

Word came from the White House on Tuesday that tables would be in the shape of a hollow square -- a design that appeals to the GOP.

“The White House is the biggest home court advantage in the world, and President Obama does a very good job in this sort of setting,” said Michael Steel, spokesman for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). “But my understanding is they don’t plan to have a President-Obama-lecturing-schoolchildren format.”

Many points are still being negotiated, but some details of the meeting are coming into focus. The White House said the meeting will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and will be divided into four parts: Cost control, deficit reduction, expansion of coverage and overhaul of the insurance system.

An hour will be set aside for each topic. A buffet lunch break of 30 to 45 minutes is the only intermission.

Obama will give an opening statement of five to seven minutes; Republicans will get a chance to respond.

Expect a freewheeling discussion, with Obama playing moderator.

Even so, Republicans aren’t happy about the location. Obama chose Blair House, the government guesthouse across the street from the White House.

The meeting is in a 1,600-square-foot room -- small for the occasion. About four dozen lawmakers and staff will attend, not including the press pool. Republicans say the room will be needlessly cramped.

Privately, GOP aides are calling the event “The Blair House Project” -- after the 1999 horror movie “The Blair Witch Project.”

“We pointed out that the venue shouldn’t drive the summit. The summit should drive the venue,” said a Republican aide, speaking on condition of anonymity. “If the room limits the ability to have a discussion, then move. But they [White House officials] are pretty excited to have it in Blair House. No one can explain why.”

peter.nicholas@

latimes.com