Enough To Be the First Black President

The New York Times published today a strong, provocative editorial by a biographer of Franklin Roosevelt: Jean Edward Smith. She throws her rhetorical weight on behalf of those liberals who urge President Obama to forsake bipartisan consensus and to forge a true program of universal healthcare with a bare liberal majority. She holds up FDR as a model, showing that he did not seek the blessing of Wall Street to pass meaningful financial reform, nor did Roosevelt feel any need to appease the virulent opposition of business interests to pass his calls for minimum wage rates and maximum work hours. You don't have to satisfy the foxes in order to protect the hens. Though, I suspect too much damage has been done to public opinion regarding universal healthcare at this point, so that it may be too late to make such strong moves, and now the game is just about covering one's ass and getting any bill passed, to be able to argue during the campaign season that real progress has been made and it is a success - what they call "politics as usual".

It does seem to me like the conservatives have been playing Obama for a fool, and that he has gladly accepted that role. For instance, it was not many weeks ago when he was insisting that the "public option" (the option to buy health insurance from the government) was vital and necessary to his universal healthcare proposal, but the conservatives got him to renounce that and to accept the idea of "insurance co-ops" (a way for private actors to provide insurance alternatives to the usual insurance businesses), and then the conservatives insisted that these co-ops are unacceptable. I don't know, maybe Obama is satisfied that he has already secured for himself a decent place in history as America's first black president, and it is enough for him just to keep from creating bad scandals and disgracing himself, so that the fight in him is just no longer there, since in his mind he has won already, even if those who were pulling for him are only losing.

This may actually have some interesting personal ramifications for me. I can only find it ruefully amusing that, by the end of all this, not only will I not have healthcare coverage, but I may also be a criminal for failing to buy insurance from a private insurer, since healthcare reform will be largely reduced to government mandates for the people to buy health insurance, which the insurers even love since this means more business is being tossed their way through legal compulsion. Well, if there is one thing the government can do well, it is to punish and break people, and as Obama is learning now, it is much easier to direct that government action against the weakest, powerless people instead of elite interests such as insurers and Wall Street financiers. Maybe this would make for a great anti-poverty program, too: just make it a crime to be poor! See, it's not so hard to make a perfect world. Hasn't the War on Drugs done wonders to end drug abuse and addiction? You just have to dare to dream big dreams, and, yes, we can make change happen - yes, we can!

( Op-Ed )

Enough To Be the First Black President

The New York Times published today a strong, provocative editorial by a biographer of Franklin Roosevelt: Jean Edward Smith. She throws her rhetorical weight on behalf of those liberals who urge President Obama to forsake bipartisan consensus and to forge a true program of universal healthcare with a bare liberal majority. She holds up FDR as a model, showing that he did not seek the blessing of Wall Street to pass meaningful financial reform, nor did Roosevelt feel any need to appease the virulent opposition of business interests to pass his calls for minimum wage rates and maximum work hours. You don't have to satisfy the foxes in order to protect the hens. Though, I suspect too much damage has been done to public opinion regarding universal healthcare at this point, so that it may be too late to make such strong moves, and now the game is just about covering one's ass and getting any bill passed, to be able to argue during the campaign season that real progress has been made and it is a success - what they call "politics as usual".

It does seem to me like the conservatives have been playing Obama for a fool, and that he has gladly accepted that role. For instance, it was not many weeks ago when he was insisting that the "public option" (the option to buy health insurance from the government) was vital and necessary to his universal healthcare proposal, but the conservatives got him to renounce that and to accept the idea of "insurance co-ops" (a way for private actors to provide insurance alternatives to the usual insurance businesses), and then the conservatives insisted that these co-ops are unacceptable. I don't know, maybe Obama is satisfied that he has already secured for himself a decent place in history as America's first black president, and it is enough for him just to keep from creating bad scandals and disgracing himself, so that the fight in him is just no longer there, since in his mind he has won already, even if those who were pulling for him are only losing.

This may actually have some interesting personal ramifications for me. I can only find it ruefully amusing that, by the end of all this, not only will I not have healthcare coverage, but I may also be a criminal for failing to buy insurance from a private insurer, since healthcare reform will be largely reduced to government mandates for the people to buy health insurance, which the insurers even love since this means more business is being tossed their way through legal compulsion. Well, if there is one thing the government can do well, it is to punish and break people, and as Obama is learning now, it is much easier to direct that government action against the weakest, powerless people instead of elite interests such as insurers and Wall Street financiers. Maybe this would make for a great anti-poverty program, too: just make it a crime to be poor! See, it's not so hard to make a perfect world. Hasn't the War on Drugs done wonders to end drug abuse and addiction? You just have to dare to dream big dreams, and, yes, we can make change happen - yes, we can!

( Op-Ed )