[UPDATE: The White House has starting posting the video in chunks. Part one is up, with more to follow.]

Riveting at points, boring as all hell at others, today's Health Care summit is the kind of politics we haven't seen before. The whole health care debate has been ugly, sometimes quite literally so. While there's been a fair amount of disingenuous arguments made around that table the crazy beautiful thing that happened today is this: we got to see them sit around that table.

Oh sure we've had CSPAN for ages, but can you really count footage from an empty Senate chamber as a real look at democracy? And yes, the politicians gave speeches to each other. We have to be a little patient, they're politicians after all. Anyone whose ever sat in on a high school debate tournament will recognize that the kind of person who grows up to be a politician isn't really trained to listen for anything but some leverage to use against the other guy. So it will take some time before this kind of thing produces real, rational discussion, but here's to baby steps.

Here's to America coming of age.