(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We have the AARP onboard because they know this is a good deal for our seniors. AARP would not be endorsing a bill if it was undermining Medicare.

JOHN ROTHER, AARP: On behalf of our members, I think it's important that we continue to say in public and to the president, no, we have not yet endorsed it.

ROBERT GIBBS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: They have been supportive of comprehensive health care reform for a long time. They have not, as they said, endorsed a specific piece of legislation.

QUESTION: So you weren't trying to mislead anyone?

GIBBS: No, no.

QUESTION: You just misspoke?

GIBBS: Right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: He just misspoke in that town hall in New Hampshire according to the White House press secretary. The president and his pitch - what about the fact checking of the president, as the White House wants to fact check all the fishy statements about health care reform?

Let's bring in our panel, Steve Hayes, senior writer for the "Weekly Standard", A.B. Stoddard, associate editor of "The Hill," and Jeff Birnbaum, managing editor digital of "The Washington Times."

Well, this was about the AARP and whether in fact the group endorsed or did not endorse, and of course they haven't yet. Jeff, what about the president's pitch and fact checking what he is saying on this stump?

JEFF BIRNBAUM, MANAGING EDITOR DIGITAL, "THE WASHINGTON TIMES": Well, this was a very big mistake, the AARP.

Let me just explain. AARP is the most powerful organization in policy sense in a political sense in the country. The only rival might be the National Rifle Association.

The AARP is second in size - in any organization in the country to the Catholic Church. It can, if it wants, kill health reform. And it remarkable to me that the AARP, which has been working so closely with the White House and the Democrats, actually made the statement slapping back the president on his mistake in New Hampshire.

This was a very big deal. They monitor closely their members and their views, because they nearly had a catastrophic situation in the 1990's when they backed catastrophic health care on Capitol Hill and their members hated it, and they still went ahead and pushed for it. And they vowed never to make such a mistake again to defy their members. And so it's clear to me their members are now telling them in their own polls they don't like what they see, and this is a real problem for health care reform.

BAIER: A.B.?

A.B. STODDARD, "THE HILL": Well, the interesting this is the AARP was helping several days back to debunk this myth that these optional consultations that would be paid for if you wanted one about end-of-life care were not, in fact, a plan to use euthanize seniors, and they were taking many calls from their member, seniors, and telling them it was a flat-out lie.

Throughout this process, many stakeholders, as they are called, have been at the table. And once again, I will repeat myself, the main problem for President Obama in selling his health care reform is that he doesn't have a plan that he's selling. It is fluid.

So stakeholders now, as the rhetoric pivots from now beating up on insurance companies or the bogey man before it was necessary to economic survival and ultimate improvement, as he shifts in his message, you see - and the proposals themselves are fluid, you see the stakeholders leaving the table.

And he needs to keep them onboard desperately whether it's the AARP or PhRMA, the drug industry, or the insurance companies.

STEVE HAYES, SENIOR WRITER, "THE WEEKLY STANDARD": Well, this was the problem with it from the beginning, I would argue, was that the reason he was able to bring these stakeholders - and let's call them what they are, special interests - to the table was because he wasn't specific. He wasn't saying which of these proposals that might drive them away from the table that he was actually going to embrace.

Now that he is being forced to do that, because these things are appearing in legislation, it is making him nervous.

And there was a very interesting aside that I think very few people picked up on yesterday when the president talked about this deal that essentially the White House cut with the big pharmaceutical companies in which essentially the pharmaceutical companies agreed to savings of $80 billion and the White House brought them to the table and essentially said we won't cut more.

Well, the president said yesterday said in an aside, we may go beyond that. And I think that got people on Capitol Hill, their ears perked up. I think certainly the pharmaceutical industry representatives in Washington, the lobbyists here are nervous about that.

And the question is, can he keep all of these people at the table at the time he starts to embrace specific proposals? I think it's tough.

BAIER: You're special interests if you are not at the table, stakeholders if you are.

(LAUGHTER)

You mentioned end of life issues, and one of the concerns that people have that I hear is something that the president talked about in that town hall meeting about his grandmother who was diagnosed with cancer and then she broke her hip and had to get a hip replacement. There you see his grandmother, a picture of her. He told "The New York Times" magazine this, "So that's where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But it's also a huge driver of cost, right? I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out there." You know, he said that if somebody told him his grandmother couldn't get the hip replacement and she was going to be in pain, he would pay for it. It just raises questions, whether it's mandatory or not in that bill as it's written where it heads. Am I right?

BIRNBAUM: You're exactly right. And it raises the specter of government telling people what they can or cannot do.

Now there is more flexibility, they think. Most people don't like that the insurance companies are telling them what can be paid for, but they certainly don't trust that government will tell them anything better.

And so I do think that this is a serious problem that he has in part because he is talking about these issues.

Why he is raising this issue is very hard for me to understand, because it's not anything that is going to benefit the health care plan that he is pushing, whatever that is, talking about end-of-life issues, scaring seniors. The last group that he should be scaring are seniors.

HAYES: But he has to raise these issues precisely because they account for so much of the cost of these proposals and these expenditures.

BIRNBAUM: You know what this reminds me of? It reminds me of Bill Clinton, really, who is willing to talk about almost anything. And Obama is, in his overexposure, I think has been talking about everything.

He needs to have a discipline to talk about just the things he says that need to be in the plan. Covering everybody is something that he isn't talking about as much.

HAYES: He should be talking about all of this stuff more, because when he does, people understand what the issues will likely be after this passes.

STODDARD: I think it's time to kill the public option, finally come out and do it. He knows go into law.

BAIER: You think the president should?

STODDARD: The president, if he wants a bill by September 15, we're talking on August 12 here about this sinking. This debate is in freefall. They have lost total control. They are not just on the defensive, it is in freefall.

If to turn this ship around he wants reform, he needs to be honest and forthright about the fact that there won't be a public option. It is the poster child of all these protest rallies.

It is a symbol for the bailout, for TARP, for the stimulus bill, for the House-passed cap and trade, it is the symbol for government intervention. And if he is honest about the fact that he doesn't have the vote for it and it's never going to be in there, he will be able to get this back on track, maybe.

BAIER: And we should point out, the bills that are written currently have public options. The one that is seen as the bipartisan vehicle hasn't even been written yet in the Senate finance committee.

BIRNBAUM: We don't even know what is in it yet.

(CROSSTALK)

HAYES: And when people learn the specifics, they like these things less.