(cross posted in DKos http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/9/12/780979/-Liberalism-is-deadhow-to-make-progress )
There are three enemies of change in the US: the insurrectionist “conservatives”, the corrupt lobbyist driven blue dogs and the timid bureaucratic “process liberals” who confuse form with democracy. The public option health insurance plan could be implemented by using the AIG insurance company that Bush and Paulson bought which already sells health insurance. Selling AIG non-profit insurance in the Post Office and via the SBA would bypass the lobbyists and take a big step towards democratizing the economy. Faced with a broken Congress, Thomas Jefferson did not wait for the Louisiana Purchase to clear Senate Committees and faced with a pro-slavery supreme court, Abraham Lincoln granted passports to black citizens and then issued the emancipation proclamation without permission. Process is not democracy and it is more than enough time to dump the hapless “high road” liberalism epitomized by Al Gore and our meek and shameful deferral to the Supreme Court led putsch in 2000.
“Part of the problem with the Finance Committee bill is that it’s being done to appease people instead of being done to put something together,” Grijalva said, calling the process “tainted” and “discredited” and noting that “the people putting it together are ex-lobbyists.”
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/09/grijalva-conrad-and-baucus-knee-jerked-their-process-is-tainted.php
And this “tainted” process takes place in parallel with the continued operation of the Republican party as an ongoing insurrection by the far right. The Republican party repudiated rule of law and respect for Democracy under Nixon, and the people who brought Federal Judges conspiring illegally to bring down Clinton, who routinely attempt to discredit the legitimate US President, who negotiated with Iran to bring down Carter and then sold weapons to Iranian Mullahs to fund terror in Central America, and who ran a government that arrested American citizens on US soil and tortured them into zombie state in a Naval Brig are not people who one can make bargains with in a good faith legislative process. But the US system of government is designed, on purpose, with vague lines between departments. The idea is that even if one or two branches have been captured, a remaining branch can express the people’s will.
Health reform is a classical case of where the responsibility of the executive is to compensate for the paralysis of Congress and the coming assault of the Federalist Supreme Court. If, by some magic, the Obama administration brings a strong public plan out of the Senate, nobody should be surprised to see devotees of Richard Posner’s Pinochet Economics in the Federal Courts decide that the Constitution forbids such meddling. But we could have public option tomorrow as a “fact on the ground”. The 80% shareholder of AIG can, belatedly, dismiss the welfare demanding management of AIG, install public management, tweak AIGs existing individual and business health plans, and sellpolicies in the Post office and via Medicare and the SBA. There is plenty of TARP money to create the backing capital for this venture and no need to negotiate with Kent Conrad and his handlers at Blue Cross Blue Shield. And there are plenty of similar opportunities for the Obama administration.
The process liberals will undoubtedly be outraged by such a proposal. The week after the Inauguration the self-appointed strategic gurus at OpenLeft were already demanding a “return” to the congressional system of governments. And religious deference for the decisions of the Supreme court is an unquestioned sacrament of process liberalism ( http://www.amazon.com/Packing-the-Court/dp/B002AU7MJK ). But those who want to grant power to the Kent Conrads and Orren Hatches and Sammy Alitos of the world, value process over democracy and clerical legalism over winning.
They would have, no doubt been outraged by FDR’s ferocious attack on the Supreme Court that was necessary for the New Deal, by Lyndon Johnson’s rough tactics in passing the Civil Rights law and breaking the segregationist insurrection, by the illegal actions of the CIO who seized property and battled the police or attacks by anti-slavery activists on slave hunters acting under the protection of the Supreme Court and the executive. And they would have needed an extra helping of clutching pearls when Abraham Lincoln became President:
Lincoln developed this position at length in responding to the Dred Scott decision in his 1858 “debates” with Stephen Douglas. Lincoln noted that “I do not propose to disturb or resist the [Court’s] decision” as it applied to Dred Scott and his family. But he would not make the Court’s constitutional understanding “a rule of political action, for the people and all the departments of the government.” Adding “something to the authority in favor of my own position,” Lincoln rehearsed at length Jefferson and Jackson’s departmentalist theories.31 He repeated and adhered to that understanding upon gaining the White House. Central to the Court’s holding in Dred Scott was the argument that free blacks were not citizens under the Constitution. In the course of its daily business the Lincoln administration was faced with the question of whether or not to adhere to the Court’s understanding of citizenship and chose to break from the Court. Federal statute required, for example, that the masters of coastal trading ships be American citizens, raising the “question whether or not colored men can be citizens of the United States . . . and therefore competent to command American vessels.”32 Lincoln’s Attorney General, Edward Bates, wrote a lengthy formal opinion providing a detailed rebuttal to Chief Justice Roger Taney’s argument against black citizenship. That opinion became the basis for the subsequent decisions by the administration, on encouragement from abolitionist Republican legislators, to begin granting passports and patents to blacks.33 Congress and the president likewise enacted legislation abolishing slavery in all federal territories and the District of Columbia, directly rejecting the Court’s specific argument that the federal territories had to be open to slavery and with Lincoln noting that he “never doubted the constitutional authority of Congress” to take such action. www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/politics/seminars/whittington.pdf
Vast majorities of the public want reform. The opposition consists of bought and paid for hacks in alliance with the extreme right’s continued movement to put an end to our experiment in democracy. Time to stop thinking like clerks and start thinking like citizens.