(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI, D-CALIF.: They said if you have a better idea, put it on the table. For the moment, however, as far as our House members are concerned, the overwhelming majority of them support a public option.

ROBERT GIBBS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: There's not a rigidity. He is focused on the end. He is focused on results. I think that's what the American people will see tomorrow night.

SENATE MINORITY LEADER MITCH MCCONNELL, R-KY.: The status quo is not acceptable, but neither are any of the proposals we have seen from the White House or the Democrats in Congress so far.

SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER, R-TENN.: I hope the president has heard the American people and we start over.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRET BAIER, HOST: You hear some of the debate today, as you look at the most recent Gallup poll: How would you advise your congressman to vote on health care reform bill? For, 37 percent, vote against it, 39 percent. Then you take a look at Americans over the age of 55 - same question - 35 percent for, vote against, 44 percent.

That is the dynamic the president is facing as he gets ready to deliver the speech to a joint session of Congress tomorrow night.

Let's bring in our panel: Fred Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard; Juan Williams, news analyst for National Public Radio, and the syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer.

Juan, you look at the polls, you hear the debate, what is your thought about where this is headed?

JUAN WILLIAMS, NEWS ANALYST, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: I think the president is in the bottom of the ninth - he said earlier that he thinks he is in the eighth or ninth innings - I think he is in the bottom of the ninth and he has to swing for the fences.

What he has to do is reshape the terms of the debate. When you look at the poll numbers that you just cited, Bret, the people are saying if it is going to be bigger government, more government intrusion in health care, if it's going to be more expensive to pay for insurance - they don't want any of it.

So he's got to say, you know what? That's not what I'm talking about. I have got a better plan. And he has got to lay out what that plan is.

I don't know that he has got to go explicit on the public option versus co-ops. The Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus and Mike Enzi, Grassley, those guys are saying they want to get something to him before tomorrow's speech. I don't think that's going to change the dynamics.

What he has got to get back to is the fact that there's a huge percentage of Americans who want health care reform and that people generally think that President Obama is trustworthy. But he hasn't laid out what he believes in. Tomorrow we should expect something bold.

BAIER: Juan mentions the Gang of Six, the negotiators - Democrats and Republicans - in the Senate Finance Committee, and there you see them there. Charles, Max Baucus, the chairman, has come out what he calls a new plan, a new proposal to try to get some bipartisan cooperation. It is pretty complex.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: It is astonishingly complex. It is also very intrusive in just about every area of existing medicine.

It's got a lot of arbitrary provisions. I will give you just a couple of examples. It says in one provision that the 2010 scheduled reduction in reimbursement for doctors under Medicare is no longer at 21 percent reduction. It is a 0.5 percent increase, out of nowhere.

It imposes what it called "fees," but these are really taxes on health insurers, drug companies, the providers of medical equipment and diagnostics, as a way for the government to help reduce the $1 trillion it would cost. It ends up reducing it by $100 billion.

But all that means is, if you're a diabetic, the cost will be passed on to the consumer but hidden in what you pay. You will be paying extra for your diagnostics, for your needles, for your drugs and your health insurance. So it's hiding a lot of the costs.

I would only point out one thing - the numbers on those who support the plan has slightly increased. There was a 10-point gap against the health care reform, and it is now a 2-point gap, and it coincides with the two weeks that the president was on vacation and said nothing.

BAIER: Fred, even late this afternoon, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that Republicans still don't have an option. They don't have a plan. We're going to keep on moving forward. What is the response to that?

FRED BARNES, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, THE WEEKLY STANDARD: President Obama has said the same thing repeatedly, and both of them have to know better, because there are all kinds of plans. I have read them. They weren't written in invisible ink.

There's one by Paul Ryan, who is really the smartest thing thinker on these issues among House Republicans, a plan that is basically based on more consumer health care where consumers, individuals, patients would decide they pick their own insurance, and so on. That's one of them.

But there are several other house plans. And there is that plan in the Senate by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, who is a Democrat. It's been endorsed by any number of Republicans as well.

So there are plenty of plans out there. That's a Democratic talking point that President Obama, in particular, should not pick up, and he said it repeatedly. He said it again on Monday in his speech in Cincinnati. He said Republicans are the people that want nothing, they don't have a plan.

You know what I think is odd about this speech? If you remember 16 years ago, President Clinton gave his speech on health care, and he outlined - this was at the beginning of the whole health care debate, and he outlined what he wanted. And it went on from there.

Now we have had the health care debate. We have had three bills pass three committees in the Senate - in the House, there are a couple of bills in the Senate, and now the president is going to come in and tell us?

Look, what a strong president does in a case like this is sit down with the parties in Congress and say here is what I want and then negotiate a bill and go from there. There is no reason for this speech, unless he is going to hit the reset button and I don't think he is.

This speech is designed not because there is a health care crisis. It is because there is a President Obama political crisis. And that is what he is going to deal with tomorrow night.

BAIER: Juan, could there be a game changer - do you think there will be a game changer in this speech? There was some talk about possibly some kind of tort reform if Democrats would accept something like that. I talked about it with Brit earlier in the show. What is your thought?

WILLIAMS: That would be a game changer.

There are all sorts of elements that could continue to reshaping the parameters of the debate.

BAIER: But it would also open up opponents like, for example, trial lawyers who would have a problem with that.

WILLIAMS: Sure, but he has got to make a move that shifts the way that we're all talking and thinking. At the moment everybody is focused on the negatives and he hasn't even said exactly what he believes in.

By the way, I think he says that Republicans don't have a plan is that you don't have Republicans coalescing around set of issues.

(CROSSTALK)

BARNES: ...the Paul Ryan plan.

WILLIAMS: I don't see it. The day they lay it down, fine, but until then...

BARNES: It doesn't have to change the parameters of the debate, Juan. He needs to change the parameters of the bill.

WILLIAMS: No, he needs to change - he has had such a bad August. It has been a political bad season for Barack Obama. He needs right now to get back in the game by saying, listen, you know what, overwhelmingly, Americans want some form of health care reform, so let's go about being serious people and not playing politics.

BAIER: Charles, last thing. Does he go after more Republicans by inserting some sort of tort reform at the risk of losing more liberals, or does he kind of walk the line as he has done many times in his big speeches?

KRAUTHAMMER: He is a guy who walks the line. If he did tort reform, I would be shocked. And I think if he had done it early, he could have gotten a lot of Republicans onboard. You do tort reform and you do regulate the insurance companies so everybody has guaranteed insurance, he would have had wall to wall support.

But it's late in the game. I can't imagine him attacking a major constituency at the end of this debate. It would be an extraordinary stroke, a good one, I think, but I don't expect he will be that bold.

BAIER: We shall see.