A Washington Post article today reprises the "table talk" from yesterday about entitlement reform. If anyone can charm congressional Democrats into a dialogue on how to contain Social Security, Medicare, and Medcaid costs, no one in the Bush Administration stands a better chance than OMB Director Rob Portman, a former six-term member of the House, who sat on the Ways & Means Committee. But when Portman approached former Ways & Means colleague Rep. John Tanner (Blue Dog-TN) last month to solicit ideas, Tanner said later, "I told him to stay in touch. Whether or not we can get something concrete done in the next two years, I just don't know." The article's final sentence captures the state-of-play of entitlement reform perfectly: "We have a bit of an Alphonse-and-Gaston routine right now of who's going to go first," Tanner said, invoking the cartoon Frenchmen famously stymied by unctuous politeness. "We've got to figure out how to get a level of trust. This is radioactive in terms of political fallout." So, which branch will take the first bite?