Donald Rumsfeld, the two-time former Defense secretary, has a well-chronicled penchant for posing his own questions and then answering them.

So does someone working in the Obama administration.

The New York Times reported this weekend that President Obama had send an emissary to New York Gov. David A. Paterson to ask him not to run in the 2010 election. Paterson, the former lieutenant governor who took over from resigned Democratic Gov. Eliot Spitzer in March 2008, has approval ratings that are near rock bottom.

And the story included this trip-down-memory-lane nugget:

"Is there concern about the situation in New York? Absolutely," the second administration official said Saturday evening. "Has that concern been conveyed to the governor? Yes.

The faces and issues change, but media strategies are timeless.

Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., is preparing to send a bipartisan letter to President Obama opposing an anticipated request for more troops in Afghanistan.

"We oppose any increase in U.S. troops in Afghanistan, especially in light of the fact that there is no exit strategy," said McGovern, who is still circulating the letter for signatures.

The top American official in Iraq, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, is expected to make an official request for more troops soon.

North Carolina Rep. Walter B. Jones, a one-time supporter of the Iraq War who became its most fierce GOP critic in Congress, is signing on to the McGovern letter, ensuring it has support in both parties.

"The president needs to slow down," said Jones, who represents the Marine base Camp Lejeune. "We're going to be more demanding of 'What are we trying to achieve?' because our troops are worn out."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said repeatedly, in hard-to-mistake terms, that she wants a public insurance option to be part of the health care overhaul working its way through Congress.

But if the California Democrat doesn't get her way -- if a public option is only triggered by a failure of private competition to bring down costs -- she says that public option may be more robust than the one conservative Blue Dog Democrats negotiated in the Energy and Commerce Committee's version of the House bill.

The group won a concession that a public insurance agency would negotiate reimbursement rates with health care providers rather than tying the rates to Medicare reimbursement standards, which is the mechanism favored by liberals in the Democratic Caucus.

"They'd be better getting a public option now than one that is triggered because if you have a triggered public option, it's because the insurance industry has demonstrated that they're not cooperating, they're not doing the right thing, and I think they'll have a tougher public option to deal with," Pelosi said Tuesday, echoing past sentiments.

Hear that, Blue Dogs and health providers? If there's a trigger, your deal may be shot.