Super Bowl Sunday brought a few surprises, including a nationally televised invitation from President Obama for Republicans to join Democrats for a health care summit later this month.

Obama invited Republicans to a half-day health care summit on Feb. 25 during an interview with Katie Couric on CBS. You can watch the full interview by clicking here.

The President says he wants Republicans to bring their “best ideas” on how to improve access and quality while lowering costs in the US health care system. And he’s going to put the whole event on TV.

Is the White House going to start over on health reform? No, according to Obama.

Is the focus for 2010 going to be jobs or health care? Jobs, says Obama.

Will a half-day summit on health reform cause Democrats and Republicans to come together and pass major bi-partisan legislation in Congress? Unlikely.

So why is the White House putting together a bipartisan summit on the one issue where Republicans have been remarkably successful in their opposition?

In short, it could be a trap.

It wouldn’t be the first time Obama and his team of advisors have used political theater to create a strategic advantage. In fact, Obama’s team could draw on past experience during the Presidential campaign in 2008 during the bank bailout.

In an excerpt from Henry Paulson’s book “On the Brink” published in the Wall Street Journal, the former Treasury Secretary detailed how the Obama campaign deftly managed a surprise move by Republican nominee John McCain to suspend his campaign and come back to Washington in late-September to deal with the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and the financial crisis.

Paulson writes: “We'd devised TARP to save the financial system. Now it had become all about politics—presidential politics. I wondered what McCain could have been thinking. Calling a meeting like this when we didn't have a deal was playing with dynamite.”

McCain’s decision precipitated a meeting with then-President George W. Bush, Obama, McCain and leadership from both sides of the aisle at the White House.

Bush, according to Paulson, called for bipartisanship and the need to act quickly on the TARP legislation. Then the President called on the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. “When Nancy Pelosi spoke, it was clear the Democrats had done their homework and had planned a skillful response for McCain,” according to Paulson.

Pelosi turned to Obama and said the Democratic nominee would represent the Democrats, Paulson writes. Obama proceeded to give a broad outline of the party’s strategy and emphasized that action needed to be made rapidly, while noting Democrats had been working with Paulson on a plan, including restrictions on executive compensation as a priority.

“Then he sprang the trap that the Democrats had set: ‘Yesterday, Senator McCain and I issued a joint statement, saying in one voice that this is no time to be playing politics. And on the way here, we were on the brink of a deal. Now, there are those who think we should start from scratch. ... If we are indeed starting over, the consequences could well be severe.’”

But, of course, there was no deal yet. [Rep. Spencer] Bachus [R., Ala.] had been maneuvered into giving credibility to the appearance of one. But he, [House Minority Leader John] Boehner and [Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell had since issued statements disclaiming the idea that there ever had been a deal. Now Obama and the Democrats were skillfully setting up the story line that McCain's intervention had polarized the situation and that Republicans were walking away from an agreement. It was brilliant political theater that was about to degenerate into farce. Skipping protocol, the president turned to McCain to offer him a chance to respond: ‘I think it's fair that I give you the chance to speak next.’

But McCain demurred. ‘I'll wait my turn,’ he said. It was an incredible moment, in every sense. This was supposed to be McCain's meeting—he'd called it, not the president, who had simply accommodated the Republican candidate's wishes. Now it looked as if McCain had no plan at all—his idea had been to suspend his campaign and summon us all to this meeting.

Obama may be trying to repeat the TARP theatrics with the health care summit. For Obama the summit has little downside: (1) It forces Republicans to deliver a serious health reform plan; (2) It takes the health care focus off Democrats and puts it squarely on Republicans; and (3) It presents the danger to Republicans as being portrayed as obstructionists.

For Democrats, the negative impact of health care reform has already been felt. The coming health care summit likely represents the beginning of a final strategy for Democrats to take one last shot at passing comprehensive legislation this year and almost certainly not a genuine attempt at a bipartisan compromise. The chances of passage remain, however, hit or miss.