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President Barack Obama returns to Washington next week in search of one thing that can revive his health-care overhaul: a sense of crisis.

Facing polls showing a drop in his approval, diminished support from independents, factions within his Democratic Party and a united Republican opposition, Obama must recapture the sense of urgency that led to passage of the economic rescue package in February, analysts said.

“At the moment, except for the people without insurance, we’re not in a health-care crisis,” said Stephen Wayne, a professor of government at Georgetown University in Washington. “You do need a crisis to generate movement in Congress and to help build a consensus.”

Obama speaks to labor leaders on Sept. 7 and to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 9 as he attempts to rebuild support for his top domestic priority, one that affects 17 percent of the economy. Lawmakers, trying to extend coverage to millions of uninsured Americans and rein in costs, are considering mandates on employers to provide coverage, new rules for insurers, and creating a government program to compete with private insurers such as Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc.

Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said the administration made unprecedented health-care progress in eight months.

‘Not There Yet’

“We gave Congress a charge, we gave them broad outlines, which is the reason we are farther along than any of the five presidents that have tried,” Emanuel said in an interview yesterday. “We’re not there yet, and this speech is intended to finish the job.”

Presidential speeches historically do little to move public opinion significantly, said George Edwards, author of “The Strategic President: Persuasion and Opportunity in Presidential Leadership.”

“This is almost like a Hail Mary, because they know that they’re substantially behind and the trajectory is negative for them,” Edwards said.

Unlike the financial crisis he inherited, the health-care debate is of Obama’s making and places a different burden on him, Edwards said.

“The best thing in presidential leadership is to recognize and exploit opportunities,” said Edwards. “The White House overestimated the nature of the opportunity.”

Stimulus Debate

Obama’s economic stimulus was debated as the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 18 percent from Nov. 4, 2008, to Feb. 13, when Congress approved the legislation. Unemployment had risen to more than 7 percent.

On the stimulus, Obama was able to say “that unless we do X right now, and X is pretty painful and pretty expensive, there is a serious danger in the next few weeks that the entire financial system will come crashing down,” said Bill Galston, a former official in President Bill Clinton’s administration, now a Brookings Institution scholar in Washington.

Former Congressman and House Majority Leader Dick Armey warns that the government is planning to exploit a hyped swine flu outbreak this fall in order to reinvigorate support behind its failing Obamacare agenda.

Armey is confident that the grass roots backlash against Obamacare will cause the plan to fail, but warns that the government has one last trick up its sleeve which it is preparing to pull in the next few months.

The former House leader told the Financial Times that wavering lawmakers in both parties might be won over by an engineered crisis that the Obama administration is planning to exploit.

“In September or October there will be a hyped up outbreak of the swine flu which they’ll say is as bad as the bubonic plague to scare the bed-wetters to vote for healthcare reform,” said Mr Armey. “That is the only way they can push something on to the American people that the American people don’t want.”

As we reported last week, Georgia Congressman Paul Broun gave a similar warning when he told attendees of a town hall event Tuesday that the Obama administration was planning to use a pandemic or a natural disaster to implement martial law in the United States.

Speaking at the North Georgia Technical College auditorium, Broun said that the “socialistic elite,” as well as Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, were planning to exploit a crisis to create a favorable climate for their stalling political agenda.

“They’re trying to develop an environment where they can take over,” he said. “We’ve seen that historically.”

Health authorities as well as Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano have been hyping the inevitability of swine flu’s deadlier return this fall ever since it first appeared in April.