Read this and tell me honestly if it wasn’t something you read here first (emphasis mine).
Despite months of outward ambivalence about creating a government health insurance plan, the Obama White House has launched a behind-the-scenes campaign to get divided Senate Democrats to take up some version of the idea for a final vote in the coming weeks.
President Obama has cited a preference for the so-called public option. But faced with intense criticism over the summer, he strategically expressed openness to health cooperatives and other ways to offer consumers potentially more affordable alternatives to private health plans.
In the last week, however, senior administration officials have been holding private meetings almost daily at the Capitol with senior Democratic staff to discuss ways to include a version of the public plan in the healthcare bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) plans to bring to the Senate floor this month, according to senior Democratic congressional aides.
I take criticism from some of my blogging colleagues and readers for being some kind of apologist for the administration. What I am actually attempting to do is tell you the truth. If I thought the administration was caving on health care reform with a public option, I would have told you that. If I though their strategy was boneheaded and wouldn’t work, I would have criticized it. Their actions made perfect sense to me because they followed the only path I could see to success. This is like trying to thread a needle, and the battle isn’t won. But, what I called “creative ambiguity” and the L.A. Times calls “strategically expressed openness,” was the only option they had.
Also, I’d really dispute the public criticism during August had much of anything to do with his expressing openness to co-ops, etc. This was strictly about letting Finance pass a bill without a public option without it looking like a dead-duck. If it had looked like a dead-duck, it could not have passed.
I’m hoping that some of this “creative ambiguity” is behind some of Obama’s recent moves in I/P. To influence Israel, the Executive branch has few sticks it can use that do not require the cooperation of the Legislative branch (and even though J Street has made some impressive strides, not enough congresscritters are willing to upset AIPAC). If Israel can be convinced that Obama would be willing to let the UN sanction it if it does not take peace negotiations seriously, that might be enough incentive to get some diplomatic movement in the next few months. I can’t think of any promise short of that which could justify Abbas suspending until March the decision to make the petition on the Goldstone report.
Hey, I’ve been saying the same thing. So that makes two of us.
I’ve also been predicting that many on the Left would take credit for forcing the administration in this direction, oblivious to the possibility that they were always headed that way.
That’s not to say that the public pressure from the left wasn’t good; I just wish it wasn’t accompanied by all the cynicism.
You were indeed off on your own little island compared to most of the liberal/left opinionators. Whether it was Obama/congressional progressives ONLY option is a little less clear, but it is becoming more likely that the whole show was A strategy. You provided some of the only reason for optimism on our side of the table as the battle raged, and it looks more and more like it was well-founded. In which case, the US has truly moved onto some strange new political landscape. And about time.
How many votes did Rockefeller’s amendment get? Was it eight? So, what was the alternative strategy?
The alternative strategy would have included putting real Dems on Finance and starting with single-payer from the start. But Obama would have been hard pressed to pressure Reid so early on, especially since he took a hit for being forced to follow through on Bush’s financial disaster.
You beat me to the punch DaveW.
You have to understand that those weren’t options.
The Senate Finance committee has no Democrats who were elected anytime before 2005 (Menendez). It is an elite committee. You can’t kick people off of it without the consensus of the whole party. Obama could not have done anything to change its makeup other than to block Carper from getting a seat on it in this Congress.
As for single-payer, there is exactly no way in hell that he would have beaten Clinton if he ran that far to the left, and you know it. And, if Kucinich had won the election, he’d be in the exact same position vis-a-vis the Senate Finance Committee, but he’d also have failed to win support for single-payer in any of the other four committees.
If you want to be critical, that’s fine. But don’t hold up some fantasy alternative universe to do so.
I don’t know at all that he’d have lost the primary running on single-payer. Anyway, he was vague enough about actual policy to cover anything he chose to do as president. He ran, as I recall against mandates, too, but that hasn’t stopped him from advocating them now. When did primary positions suddenly become law? I’m not saying his strategy won’t turn out to be the best in the end — just reacting to your absolutist claim that it was the only possible way to go.
You obviously know more about the Senate dance than I do, but I continue to disbelieve that the Dems couldn’t have set up a more favorable committee structure and rules if they’d wanted to at the start of the new session.
Everyone would have come out against Obama if he had run a liberal campaign. The Village would have slaughtered him, he never could have won all those caucus states out West, he wouldn’t have received half the endorsements he got, his early money would not have been there. This country is fucked up for a lot of reasons, and simply running as a full-throated liberal can’t solve any of them.
As for the Senate, you’re pretty much just wrong. At the beginning of this Congress, two seats opened up on Finance. They went to Menendez and Carper. For Menendez, it was a reward for agreeing to head up the DSCC during this cycle. It allows him to raise big money not only for himself but for all Democrats. He’s also in the liberal half of the caucus, and the only Latino. So, it’s a win-win-win.
Carper got it because he had put in the time and because he’s about the most pro-corporate Democrat in the caucus. They definitely could have and should have picked someone else. He voted against Rockefeller’s public option and against Nelson’s effort to negotiate Medicare Part D prescriptions. He did vote for Schumer’s public option, though, so all is not lost.
But, beyond picking someone more liberal instead of Carper, there isn’t anything Reid could have done. Remember when we wanted Lieberman kicked out of the caucus or at least stripped of his chairs and seniority? Reid couldn’t do that, either, without the support of the caucus.
From what I recall there was a hue and cry when they allowed Lieberman to keep his appointments but it was argued since they were so close to 60 votes they needed to keep him happy. You don’t just substitute new members in for those who didn’t get re-elected, with each new Congress comes new committees. The fact that the Obama administration tried to woo the Republican Party and so gain some bi-partisan support for his legislation doesn’t negate the fact that these committees were chosen by the Democrats.
I don’t even understand your comment.
The committees rarely change at all. This Congress has the exact same committees as the last Congress. What happens is that, as senators gain seniority, they win seats on more prestigious committees. Jon Tester won a seat on Appropriations (that Reid promised him back in 2006) after waiting for two years. Senators drop old assignments like on Aging, Small Business, and Vet’s Affairs, and take on better assignments like Finance or Appropriations.
Your seniority on a committee is generally judged by how long you have been serving on that committee, and not by your overall seniority. That is because to be a chair, you need to master that committee’s business over the course of long years of apprenticeship. So, you don’t just parachute into the Judiciary Committee, for example, and take over the chair when you’ve never dealt with the Justice Department of the Federal Judiciary in your life.
Just because few changes were made this Congress doesn’t mean they couldn’t have happened. That each Congress picks its own committee members is a fact. The U.S. Senate webpage states:
In the practice of recent years, party conferences convene before the start of each new Congress to elect leaders and determine committee assignments. Each party conference appoints a “committee on committees” to prepare a roster of members it wishes named to the party’s specifically allotted committee seats. The percentage of a party’s representation within the Senate determines the percentage of seats it will gain on each committee, although exact numbers are subject to negotiation between party floor leaders.
How can you reconcile your words with the following press release?
January 14, 2009
(Washington, D.C.) – Montana Senator Max Baucus is expected to retain his key committee assignments in the 111th Congress, including his powerful position as Finance Committee Chairman.
Senate Majority Leader Reid (D-Nev.) announced anticipated committee assignments in a press release today. The list shows Baucus holding onto his important positions on the Finance Committee, the Agriculture Committee, and the Environment and Public Works Committee.
“This is great news,” Baucus said. “My number one priority is making sure Montana’s economy stays strong. I’ll keep fighting to create jobs and boost our economy in everything we do. I’m honored to continue representing our great state on these important committees.”
I came here because I thought you were knowledgeable about politics. It seems you’re just another run-of-the-mill pundit who’s more than willing to lie and distort the facts in order to have his opinion prevail. Very disappointing.
How do I reconcile it? Because it is exactly what I said.
The caucus as a whole selects the committee assignments by ratifying what the committee on committees decides. Baucus could theoretically have been kicked off Finance, but not by Reid or Obama. But he would not be kicked off unless the majority of the Democratic caucus wanted him kicked off.
To see a real world example, the majority of House Dems did kick Dingell out as chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee and they selected Henry Waxman in his stead. Pelosi is alleged to have been supportive of the move, although she was officially neutral. So, it can be done. But with Dingell it was a variety of factors. Waxman has been waiting for that chair for twenty years. Climate change is on the docket and Dingell has always been a thorn on that.
The truth is, there was never going to be a majority in the Senate to boot Baucus. And Baucus wasn’t really the problem, anyway. He offered a public option initially. The problem was Conrad and Lincoln, whose defections would kill any bill no matter who was chairman.
It’s not true that the whole party has to approve the appointment of a Senate Committee Chairman. Members are selected, not elected, to sit on the various committees with the most senior appointed becoming Chairman. There are three more senior Democrats than Baucus. If the will had been there the Finance Committee membership definitely could have been arranged to stack it with senators more favorable towards the public option. The requisite key was Obama and the Democrat leadership laying the groundwork in advance to allow real health reform get through. The fact that they gave the Chairmanship to Baucus suggests a public option in the final bill was never intended. Certainly Barak Obama’s public stance has been that getting the bill through was the priority, and that whether it passed with or without the option was of no concern to him.
About the fantasy alternative universe: it’s a shame that a system of health care proven to be more efficient, more universal, and far less costly by every other industrialize country in the world is considered “that far to the Left”. It’s a shame that even after a massive, decades-long smear campaign to discredit single payer the majority of Americans continue to be denied their request for a strong public option. It’s a shame that 45,000 Americans have to die every year from a lack of health care. It’s a shame that annually hundreds of billions which could be put back in the pockets of consumers are sucked away and lost. Its a shame that the Administration and governing party have refused to campaign for single payer and spread the word why it is the best of all worlds for each and every American. Personally I want to live in that fantasy alternative universe, and if this won’t be it then I want change. Change I can believe in. You settle for whatever scraps the wealthiest 1% throw you. I, however, prefer to die on my feet than live on my knees.
Okay.
If you want me to take you seriously, you need to make serious arguments.
Who is more senior than Baucus?
Answer: Byrd, Inouye, and Leahy.
Byrd was the chair of Appropriations (the most coveted chair) until his infirmities forced him to hand the gavel to Inouye. That leaves Leahy. Leahy is the chair of the Judiciary Committee and he does not even sit on Finance. He has no claim to the Finance chair, and he doesn’t have years of experience on the those issues that would justify his taking over for Rockefeller or Conrad.
Even if Obama and Reid hatched some plan to kick Baucus off of the Finance Committee, they’d be unable to convince a majority of the caucus to go along with it. The caucus does ‘elect’ the chairman, by the way. They do it by ratifying the organizational plan.
As for the rest of your comment, I wish we had a better system of government and a culture that was more friendly to government-run programs. But I’m not going to criticize the president for recognizing the true contours of our society and acting accordingly.
I guess it all boils down to whether or not you want to live in a democracy. More than 65% of Americans want a public option – despite the Establishment spending hundreds of millions in anti-reform propaganda. Imagine what we could have had if health reform had some leadership behind it instead of Obama.
I believe those 65% will get what they want. It may not be 100%, but it will be close.
The will of the majority does usually get expressed in a democracy, but change has to happen through the legislative process, and this is often a sticky jerky process. (Whilst we, as progressives, can bemoan the barriers that legislatures can erect to change in a progressive environment, I thank my luck stars for this protection in conservative times)
I simply think that getting single-payer through the committees of congress and then through both chambers would have been impossible, the onus is on you to outline exactly how Obama could have pushed SP through.
why do you call it the “democrat” leadership? the adjective is “democratic”. Democrat is a noun.
Because I was referring to the leadership of the Democratic Party, not to the process by which they became leaders.
Yes you may toot your own horn Booman.
I have been lurking on this blog for the past 9 months.
And when stated the strategy for healthcare, I honestly said the same thing on several blogs and people thought I was crazy.
It was refreshing to see someone who was thinking along the same wavelength.
Well, Booman, I think you might be as correct as anyone trying to divine the political machinations of the healthcare debate. And for that, I appreciate your insights.
Having said that, I still think Obama had tremendous political capital when he was elected and I think healthcare reform could have been better served by Obama acting forcefully, as a leader, and pushing early on for a public option in no uncertain terms.
You know what I’m saying–the LBJ style of no-holds barred arm twisting: “You like funding for that military base down in Georgia? Let’s work a deal.”
I disagree. I fear that strategy would have upset some members of his own party who are trying hard to maintain the separation between the legislation and executive branches of power.
Obama’s been letting the debate take its course, he’s been taking stock of public sentiment, and he’s made his own preference clear. Now, when we’re close, I think he has the ability to push this over the top, and I expect him to exert more behind-the-scenes pressure because no one wants to look like they caved in to the president. Any Senator who changes his position needs to be able to tell his constituents he changed it on his own. If Obama is too overt, that can’t happen, and it weakens, not strengthens, our party.
It’s painful to say, but I’m afraid he was aware that coming off as the arrogant black guy twisting all those old white arms would bring a hurricane reaction even (if secretly) from some “moderates” in his own party. Don’t forget, LBJ was a Good Old Boy from Texas, crony to the oil cartel, and a lifetime pol. He could get away with it. Obama didn’t think he could. And the response to all his “reaching out” proves he was absolutely right.
Obama has been criticized in these terms around the left blogosphere for months, but I’ve never understood precisely how critics think that would have played out. After all it’s Congress that legislates. How would Obama have made congress pass a bill Obama wrote (or precisely outlined)? Yes, maybe Bush did it a few times, but he was going for legislation that favored corporations and had the lobbyists writing the legislation and doing the arm twisting for him in case a majority of congresscritters foolishly were thinking about the voters. But Obama’s hcr was going against the corporations and lobbyists. I’m curious what “Obama should be/ have been more forceful” critics have in mind for how Obama’s forcefulness would result in say a robust PO.
The answer usually boils down to some variation of “by wanting it really, really bad” , if you’re lucky.
If you’re not lucky — or on DemocraticUnderground.com — the answer is “Signing statements — Bush did it” or “Executive orders”.
signing statements! that’s rich. thanks!
Sorry Booman – I’m getting tired reading your “Little Miss Sunshine” commentary when to me (and most other progressives/fiscal conservatives) the Obama administration’s desire to push through health care ‘reform’ is only exceeded by its need to keep the insurance and pharmaceutical lobby happy. But I’ll let Saturday Night Live and Firedoglake make my points for me. It’s enough to make one weep.
Sorry but SNL did a bad job with displaying Obama. Especially saying that he hasn’t accomplished anything.
Even Politifact had to point that out…
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2009/oct/05/saturday-night-live-obama-campaign-promi
ses/
Funny – when I followed your link I came up with a completely different reading of what Politifact.com was saying between the lines. Anyways broadly speaking there was precious little they could credit Obama with “promises kept” where SNL had ticked off “not done”. And their parting shot was pointing out it took five months, not four, for him to pick a dog. Not exactly a debunking of what was, after all, a comedy skit.
Everybody who’s read that, didn’t interpret the way you did. But it’s seems as if you have a pessimistic bent, so you are going to read it in a way that fits the agenda you are trying to push.
I’m unready to cede you the privilege of representing the views of “everybody”. With nearly 6,000 comments left on Huffington Post about Saturday’s SNL show I can truthfully say the skit seems to have hit a responsive chord amongst its readers. Read a few of them and get back to me.
Yeah, because Huffington Post represent every progressive liberal’s thought.
Sure…
No projection here. Never has been.
And weren’t you just trying to represent all progresive liberals by prefacing your comment, with
“most other progressives/fiscal conservatives”. Which makes me unready to cede you any priviledge of trying to make people swim in your pessimism.
Maybe you’re projecting?
Well I probably went too far in saying most progressives who are fiscally conservative believe Obama isn’t working for the good of the People but I’m willing to bet I’m close. Besides most (a majority) is not nearly the same as everybody. But let’s cut to the chase. If all you can do is challenge my semantics I take it that you can’t rebut my central argument that Obama has dropped the ball on health care?
“Despite months of outward ambivalence about creating a government health insurance plan, the Obama White House has launched a behind-the-scenes campaign to get divided Senate Democrats to take up some version of the idea for a final vote in the coming weeks.” – the fact that the Obama administration is only now actively campaigning for a public option should say it all.
Says it all?
Unless you can provide me with an alternate reality where Obama had convinced Kent Conrad, Blanche Lincoln, Bill Nelson, Tom Carper, and Max Baucus to pass a public option through the Finance Committee, you don’t have a critique.
Imagine for a moment how the mark-up of the Finance bill would have gone if the sword of a veto-Damocles had been hanging over the deliberations the whole time.
Pretend for a moment that Obama had promised to veto the legislation under consideration in Finance, and Baucus had to deal with that while simultaneously trying to win support for the bill from Snowe, Grassley, Enzi, and the skeptical Democrats.
That obviously would have been an impossible situation, with the administration taking the blame for the failure to compromise.
It would have been a disaster. We would have no bill from Finance, the whole effort would be stalled. We’d have to go to the Reconciliation process with the administration taking all the blame, and no momentum whatsoever.
I’ve said from the beginning that Obama crippled the chances for any serious overhaul of health care when he refused to actively campaign for it – not, judging from his actions, that he ever had any real intention of introducing true reform. I’m not alone in this, far from it. Take Gore Vidal in an interview with the London Times for example who said:
Another notable Obama mis-step has been on healthcare reform. “He f***ed it up. I don’t know how because the country wanted it. We’ll never see it happen.” As for his wider vision: “Maybe he doesn’t have one, not to imply he is a fraud. He loves quoting Lincoln and there’s a great Lincoln quote from a letter he wrote to one of his generals in the South after the Civil War. `I am President of the United States. I have full overall power and never forget it, because I will exercise it’. That’s what Obama needs — a bit of Lincoln’s chill.”
You have noted another person, who wasn’t in the tank for Obama to begin with.
And I am not alone in my feelings either.
So we can just agree to disagree.
We are at a stage where every committee of the US congress has or is about to pass a version of health reform. Some elements are now so common that they are widely accepted (insurance reform, etc).
Do you think that this all happened by some random process without presidential direction? You say he “refused to actively campaign” for reform, but active campaigning can be hidden and behind the scenes and doesn’t have to be in the form of ‘lines in the sand’ or reminiscent of Rec List rants at Daily Kos.
And Gore Vidal? He’s just plain wrong. The odds appear to be that real health care reform, with a public option (that over time has the potential to grow and morph) will be passed.
How has he dropped the ball? Last time I checked, there is no final bill. Actually, the line you emphasis doesn’t prove or say anything. If anything that line proves exactly what BooMan has been saying all along about this process.
If we there was a final bill with none of the tenets that he promised in it, then I would say that he has dropped the ball.
Why can’t you admit that Booman was heading along the right path with his analysis?
As for challenging your semantics, you were challenging mine and stating that I was projecting. I don’t know what I was supposedly trying to project. You referenced HuffPo, which there have several glaring headlines on that site that has been challenged.
Also, Obama still has high approval ratings. SO apparently, people are waiting to see what will happen. I don’t him giving a timeline on passing healthcare either. It’s great that he has gotten this far.
If you had an argument to rebut, I would gladly do do.
I am thinking faster than I type.
I meant to say that “I don’t remember him giving a timeline on passing healthcare either. It’s great that he has gotten this far.
If you had an argument to rebut, I would gladly do so.”
My comment was referring to the nearly 6,000 comments about the SNL Obama skit. I was not sourcing Huffington Post as support for my statement. Your commentary has been about a “straw man” you set up – not I.
P.S. What’s great about “getting this far”? As you yourself said there’s been no final bill. We’ll see who’s right when the dust settles.
I haven’t any strawman.
You’re right, we will see who will be right.
Well done, BooMan.
This is why I keep coming back to THIS blog. I have never had much respect for Open Left and its key bloggers, or some of the other ‘names’ out there who pose as progressives but sometimes hurt, more than help, our case.
BooMan, you have every right to toot your own horn. You’ve been right way more often than wrong, and are very articulate and impassioned, too. It’s a great combination.
You are correct.
And also, he has brought in doctors from the states of the senators who voted down the Public Option in the senate.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_10/020266.php
They are as follows:
Dr. Hershey Garner (from Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s home state of Arkansas)
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that these four were not just chosen at random. Call it a hunch./ Hat Tip Steve Brenen.
what is he bringing them in to do?
Playing 11-dimensional chess is cool, as long as you’re winning.
You da (Boo)Man!
It’s just too damned bad Obama’s “creative ambiguity” isn’t going to morph into Medicare for All(TM) before 1212. Can you map that out? Will the public outrage when they realize they get no immediate relief from this half-assed legislation elect more progressives to Congress in 2010? Will Obama even be president after 2012? Give me some hope, please.
The public will get immediate relief. Most people have health care insurance. But they lose it if they lose their jobs. They worry whether they’ll really get the coverage they are paying for. They may be uninsurable on the individual market due to preexisting conditions, so they are stuck in their jobs and can’t quit and start a small business. The insurance reform elements of this bill are what will be most popular, and those reforms should go into effect sooner than the 2012 election.
The most unpopular part of the bill will be the mandate, but that won’t go into effect prior to the 2012 election.
In the only actual state — Massachusetts — with an actual plan with an actual must-purchase mandate, no public option, and fines for failure to purchase, in place since 2006, a recent — 9/28 — poll shows respondents satisfied with the plan by a 2-1 margin. Repeal was the choice of 11% of respondents.
And since the legislature hasn’t turned over, voters apparently steadfastly refuse to punish the reps and senators who voted in this presumptive abomination.
Booman,
I hope you are right, and that His Coyness is using some obscure strategy to obtain something he doesn’t act like he wants.
It seems to me if you are negotiating for something you ask for more than you want, e.g.: if you want a million dollars you ask for 1.5, and when the counter offer is .5 you move down to 1.3 and eventually settle on the one million you wanted in the first place. If Obama wanted a public option, why was that the starting point?
And why is Harry Reid taking more of a lead than Obama? or at least it seems that way.
Like I said. I hope you are right. I hear people all the time excuse him by saying he has a strategy we don’t yet know about. I want to believe that, but I will believe it when I see it.
I agree, it’s hard to just take it on faith that Obama is working to get the best reform possible, and that he’s onto a new kind of strategy. For me, at least, the other option is even harder to credit: that he just used us to get to be president and now feels free to show us his Republican face. That adds up even less, and those are pretty much the only explanations available.
I’m betting that what we’re dealing with really is a new kind of politics that we have yet to get the shape of. The result will define the man. We’ll know soon enough what we’ve got. I remain mostly optimistic on this point.
There is a tertium quid — that Obama is simply doing what a president ought to do — run the co-equal, independent, executive branch, and let a co-equal, independent Congress do what Congress is supposed to do, and has sloughed off on doing for a generation, more or less, getting slack, fat and lazy in the process.
Too many people greeted Obama’s election with “Good, now it’s our turn to have a king from our party” instead of “Good — no more kings”.
I am glad he is running his third …. but he seems to have forgotten what TR said about using the Presidency as a bully pulpit. At least he has shied away from that role in this issue… waiting for others to lead.
You’re right that in a simple one-on-one negotiation (the central Market in Istanbul is a fine place to practice this) you tend towards a middle from starting points.
But this has never been a simple negotiation. Different options have different levels of support.
Stronger than a public option => no Repub support, less than uniform Dem support, no cloture in Senate
Weaker (more ambiguous) than public option => no Repub support, uniform Dem support, cloture in Senate
Therefore, I believe that the White House indicated it would be happy with the second option. In Reconciliation different rules apply, you can strongly go for option 1.
I don’t consider him a GOPer at all, just a moderate Dem greatly influenced by corporate sponsors.
Yes, you clearly can, but you also may!
But you’re not the first or the only, just perhaps the most read.
It is easy to forget now, but the fact that he won a Presidential election is more or less de facto proof of his political skills. And 10 months in doth not a Presidency make.
He’s the President now, so he’s going to make both extremes of the political spectrum angry from time to time. I don’t like all of it, but I call it simply, “pragmatism.”
It’s a really hard job when 33% of the country actively hates you, even though you’re trying to do right by them (for most POTAI, but ultimately their judgment is Our judgement).
“It is easy to forget now, but the fact that he won a Presidential election is more or less de facto proof of his political skills.”
How right you are, especially considering who he is and where he was coming from.
“And 10 months in doth not a Presidency make.”
Right again. Ten months in to trying to clean up a most unbelievable mess created by the worst, most vicious presidential administration in American history.
And no, Booman, you ain’t wrong. Keep up the good work!
Hear hear! (as my own infantile Parliamentarians are prone to shout)
I think you’ve done excellently on this topic Booman, especially when the MSM and most paid advocates on Daily Kos had pronounced hope still born months ago.
Don’t get cocky now, we now have high expectations 🙂
Yes, absolutely. Very impressive how you gamed this out.
The BooMan has consistently proivided the best analysis of this whole health debate by far. Not even close.
While I can appreciate that this and many other of your articles are useful views into the operations of the national legislative and executive branches, much the ‘truths’ you report are your version, with all of its tendentious claims about ‘but ‘X’ …never was going to happen”, …was unrealistic, or it was “…the only option they had” & etc. As long as nothing is possible except what we see Obama constrained to do, things are terribly easy to justify, to explain away, to resign one’s self to, and to assert, in effect, “Anything else is just no use”.
In the two remarks cited above, your adherence to what’s expressed in the second one is very largely responsible for the facts you lament in the first one.
“the true contours of our society”, if it means anything, is simply a sop to “the circumstances which currently prevail” and it’s a sop which implies, with an unstated but nonetheless palpable resignation (which always calls itself “being realistic”), that things can’t be any different or, if they could, that this would entail lots of work, lots of effort, and, frankly, it’s that effort that Obama is not going to take upon himself–and, for you, he’s not to be criticized for that.
A broad range of things are and shall remain next-to-impossible (and it’s on this aspect that we agree!) as long as the general public are allowed to remain in their present state of blissful ignorance regarding so many vitally important aspects of social, political, economic and scientific affairs. It happens that in many cases of the ignorance I allude to, there is really no one better placed (or, indeed, anyone at all) to make a sustained effort at challenging, explaining and correcting the common errors and ignorance than the president himself. If he doesn’t do it, basically, it isn’t going to be done–and if you argue otherwise, please let us know who else does this sort of work effectively? ‘Think-tanks’ do not. They address their particular closed-society captive audiences. Schools and universities do not. The ‘private sector’ certainly does not.
For all the hullabaloo that was made of it, Obama’s stint as a community organizer in South Chicago neighborhoods was a passing “blip” on the screen, a useful line on a career résumé rather than what, of course, community organizing must be when its done effectively: a dedicated life’s-work. In U.S. culture, and especially political culture, a person is obliged to choose: he can either have an ambition to make genuine progress in bettering the lives of average people on a neighborhood level or, as Obama did, he can play at community organizing for a while and leave it behind to pursue high office. But in U.S. political culture, no one has successfully done both. Teddy Kennedy’s “life ambition” to reform health care always suffered from another and superior priority: his political career’s maintenance and advancement. It’s such a prioirty which habitually shoves to the rear all sorts of work on which real and enduring progress depends.
When Obama’s term is done—and I’m already betting it will end with one term in office—not only will the nation have fallen far short of anything approaching a satisfactory advance toward universal health care or the indispensable changes required to forestall the coming climate-driven catastrophes, but, worse, the ignorance from which the decades of lack of progress have ensued will not have been appreciably reduced. And the reason is a very simple and obvious one: as Bush and Cheney had, Obama will have to say that he had “other priorities”.
Obama is conventionally very bright, and, compared to Bush, certainly better in oral expression. But the truth is that he is not either an unusual or very imaginative thinker. And, at length, his oral presentation is leaden and wearying in its monotone, calculated measure and absence of drama.
Very rarely he does or says something dramatic and unexpected. That is all too rare. More often, what we see is a man who is adept at calculating a narrow view of his own personal or party political assets and liabilities and cutting the latter when it seems convenient, as he did when Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s controversial (but honest and true) public statements “required” Obama to disavow Rev. Wright.
That kind of politicking may be conventional but it’s also just the sort of conventionality which ensures that when his term is done very little will have been changed for the better. Obama will always be, of course, the better of the two main options the nation had before it, that of himself or the simply unthinkable McCain-Palin ticket. But that fact, while true, is a terrible truth which encapsulates what so damns the nation’s prospects.
So, should “liberals” who are progressive congratulate themselves over the fact that “the Obama White House has launched a behind-the-scenes campaign” to achieve this, that or another initiative? “Behind-the-scenes” government, hmmm. That reminds me of some others, now, who wer—–? Oh! Yeah. Now I remember.
Obama is conventionally very bright, and, compared to Bush, certainly better in oral expression. But the truth is that he is not either an unusual or very imaginative thinker.
In other words, “a second class intellect, but a first rate temperament.”
Seems we survived that combination the last time it turned up
‘ In other words, “a second class intellect, but a first rate temperament.” ‘
Unfortunately, his temperament is not “first-rate” either —at least for a president of the United States. In my view, that’s because the president of a nation–indeed, any nation, not only the United States— needs resolve. But where Obama most shows resolve is exactly in being so all-fired determined to “split-the-difference”. A sort of resolute practice of being irresolute. In many crucial questions, “the difference” cannot be “split” without making nonsense of it. As I’ve written elsewhere describing Obama:
he’s our “Solomon” but with this exception: when the women who are disputing their claims to be the mother of a certain infant come before our “Solomon”, unlike the one of old, Obama takes up the sword and actually severs the child, rendering each woman “half”, and then passes on to the next burning question.
You write,
“Seems we survived that combination the last time it turned up.”
Really? We “survived” ? Are you sure about that? [And, by the way, “who” was this to whom you allude as “a second class intellect, but a first rate temperament.” ?
If it’s Bill Clinton, then I think I agree it much better fits him (if, again, you forget certain misfortunes).
He is referring to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
It’s Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. on FDR….
Your simplistic dismissal of my point is a case-book example of the sort of nonsense to which I referred above. Even if we grant what are, to me, very doubtful premises, namely, one, that Justice Holmes was correct in assessing FDR in that way and, two, that the assessment is also validly applied to Barack Obama, the fact remains that the only way that this quip of yours can be redeemed from being utter nonsense is if one supposes, according to the syllogism you assert, that, since we came through (i.e. “survived”) the trials of the Great Depression under FDR, we shall therefore survive today’s economic wreckage.
I wonder how broadly you apply such reasoning in life’s circumstances? If you survive one bout of pneumonia, do you then look on any subsequent attack as being necessarily non-life-threatening? Would the fact that one might have lost a prized employment but found something else (though less satisfactory) imply, for you, that there’ll always be another more-or-less satisfactory employment after any job loss?
I have another view of the predicament we all face today. Instead of taking comfort in what seems to me to be an utterly ridiculous supposition that, since we’ve seen this before and “survived” it under FDR, we’re therefore going to survive it “again” under Barack Obama, you imagine applying your simplistic view to a world which is playing the equivalent of “Russian roulette”. We can’t, of course, know how many “chambers” there are in the “gun” in this analogy, nor how many of them are “loaded”; but I think it’s safe to say that, if we continue to apply your confident reasoning, the world is going to eventually suffer something analogous to a Russian roulette player’s blowing his brains out.
There is also another “detail” you blithely pass over when you assert, “Seems we survived that combination the last time it turned up”. The hundreds of thousands among “us” (at the time) who didn’t survive, either figuratively or literally. In addition, numerous historians, economists and political theorists agree in retrospect that one of the consequences of the Great Depression, in aspects both direct and indirect (since these were variously multifaceted), was the “cocktail” of circumstances which produced World War II–presided over from start to nearly-finish by “last time’s” “second class intellect, but a first rate temperament”.
Americans have a peculiar habit of lavishing their esteem and honor on those presidents who were at the nation’s helm through the worst (most destructive) wars of our history. Lincoln, whose terms saw the greatest wartime devastation the country has known either before or since the Civil War, and, FDR, whose terms were surely the “runner-up” for such a distinction when applied, not to the United States themselves, but, rather, to the world at large, are perhaps the two most admired presidents of contemporary Americans; and it seems that it’s not despite the wars, with their terrible devastation, that they’re admired, but, rather, because of them. The reason is obvious: Americans generally regard the outcome, in one case as in the other, as one they can qualify as a “victory”—certainly, that is the standard interpretation which public schooling indoctrinates in Americans and, from which, apparently, the great majority never recover [That, in itself, is a matter which deserves an extended discussion].
Your logic assumes, without stating this explicitly, that we can and should go on expecting to “survive”. I think you’re wrong, disastrously wrong. I think that there’s a very definite limit to the number of such “victories” we can afford and that this limit is much, much closer than you apparently are able to imagine, if you can imagine it at all.
On the other hand, as an example of the stubborn blindness I’m deploring, you do marvellously.
Setting aside people who didn’t live through FDR’s presidency, the people I have known loved him above all for leading us out of the Depression. People of that age generally love FDR, but if they don’t, they love Ike…for bringing peace and prosperity, as they see it.
A younger generation may admire FDR primarily for his role in winning World War Two. But I think you exaggerate that. What people remember is that FDR united enough of this country to get great and lasting and important things done, both foreign and domestic.
People admire Lincoln for preserving the nation and freeing the slaves. They don’t admire him for the slaughter that occurred while he was president.
While I think Booman is right in his opinion on why Lincoln and FDR gained such enduring populist support it’s a minor quibble distracting away from Proximity1’s main point – that there’s no comfort to be had from the fact the country did eventually emerge from the devastation of the Great Depression. I’m quite confident I’m not alone in my abject horror about what I see coming. Proximity1 seems to share this same belief for example. There are many of us who see our society collapsing before our eyes. As Proximity1 points out individuals as well as nations have to live through catastrophe, and when it gets bad many don’t survive. My mother lived through the Depression and it scarred her emotionally, as it did virtually everyone her age, for the rest of her life. No wonder people of “that age” remember FDR fondly. The absence of pain and suffering is the greatest feeling of all.
Thank you for this:
“While I think Booman is right […]it’s a minor quibble distracting away from Proximity1’s main point -“…
with which I very much agree. The responses are, though brief, a study in “missing” (ignoring?) the main points, which weren’t addressed at all.
then, about the following,
…”that there’s no comfort to be had from the fact the country did eventually emerge from the devastation of the Great Depression.”
While I don’t argue that there’s no ‘comfort’ to be had, I do insist that none of that ‘comfort’ was any use to the uncounted numbers of people whose lives were effectively destroyed by the Great Depression —and the horrors it precipitated, World War II, in which many, many millions were killed or maimed. Those losses, too, I impute to the devastation which the Great Depression wrought by “knock-on” effect and that is still without even having mentioned the direct economic depression’s harms outside the U.S. economy.
But, really, the main point is that, even if one does seek ‘comfort’ in his or some other’s having “survived” the Great Depression, there is, in that survival, simply no reasonable grounds to conclude that, therefore, the current or the next similar collapses can also be so successfully “survived”—and it’s in that assumption that I regard the logic of the reply so false and faulty.
Taken together, these two commentaries go a long way toward describing what the people of the U.S. are “up against”.
October 5, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
The Politics of Spite
By PAUL KRUGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/opinion/05krugman.html?em=&pagewanted=print
_______________
October 6, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Does Obama Get It?
By BOB HERBERT
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/opinion/06herbert.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print