President Bush’s veto of a bill to reauthorize the State Children’s Health Insurance Program means that the White House and Congress will have to start negotiating a package both can live with. But to do that, the president will have to begin talking about SCHIP, as the program is known, in a way that at least comes close to reality. So far, he has refused to do that.

Again recently, as he has all summer, the president said he opposed the SCHIP expansion -$35 billion over five years to cover about 10 million more children – because, “I don’t want the federal government making decisions for doctors and customers.”

But those customers – patients – don’t have their medical decisions made by government under SCHIP. They use private insurers and private doctors, who presumably make their decisions based on their medical expertise.

The president had concluded early on that he would make an example of SCHIP; perhaps he wanted a way to show that he would hold the line on federal spending (after involving the country in a war that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars). Throughout the summer, his administration has portrayed SCHIP as the gateway program to socialized medicine. But he has picked the wrong program.

The right example of socialized medicine is Medicare, in which taxpayers contribute to fund health coverage for the elderly. It is efficient, effective and widely used, and like its cousin, Social Security, it keeps millions of seniors out of poverty. What’s more, the largest expansion in the history of this fine example of socialized medicine was its recent drug benefit, championed by President Bush. Not only was this a huge expansion, but its combination of government support for private coverage is how SCHIP already works.

Republicans have been put into the uncomfortable position of looking for compromise with President Bush and at the same time finding some redeeming thought behind his veto. That’s been a hard balance. As Sen. Olympia Snowe said in a statement the other day, the veto “seriously misjudges the genuine concern Americans have about access to care, particularly for children.”

It does, and it is cynical beyond the usual Washington maneuverings for the president to repeatedly mischaracterize what the program is and how it works when he knows better. Compromise may come, but the White House must know how badly it played with this issue.