A Good Lousy Compromise
Published in Süddeutsche Zeitung
(Germany) on 21 December 2009
by Christian Wernicke (link to
original)
Barack Obama’s supporters are angry with him. Unjustly so, because America’s liberals won’t get a better healthcare reform package than the one currently emerging.
America’s liberals are squabbling among themselves and are angry with Obama, their one-time idol: in order to close out his first year in office with some kind of great success, he was willing to make some major compromises to his healthcare reform legislation.
Not only are those fine-print items dictated by Republican Party members, but even symbolic reform elements like the public option have been written off by Obama’s own party. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party promptly went into open revolt against “Obama-Care.”
But the liberals won’t get anything better than the current compromise. Republicans in Congress are fundamentally opposed and united – when the bill comes up for a vote on Christmas Eve day, not a single Republican will vote for it. That means Democrats will have to reform healthcare – which accounts fully for one-sixth of the U.S. national economy – all by themselves.
That’s an enormous undertaking. If the Democrats fail, it could be decades before reform is attempted again. It will be a rare Democrat who will be willing to take on such a project again, especially after seeing what happened to someone as popular as Obama (as well as to the Clintons in the 1990s) when anyone tries to do something meant to heal a nation and its people.
This reform package may pass muster in the Senate. Obama will celebrate, but will anxiously anticipate what’s yet to come: the House of Representatives has to add its approval and that’s where Obama will have to sell liberals on the idea that half a success is still a success. And that it’s far better than the failure that now threatens everything.
America’s liberals are squabbling among themselves and are angry with Obama, their one-time idol: in order to close out his first year in office with some kind of great success, he was willing to make some major compromises to his healthcare reform legislation.
Not only are those fine-print items dictated by Republican Party members, but even symbolic reform elements like the public option have been written off by Obama’s own party. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party promptly went into open revolt against “Obama-Care.”
But the liberals won’t get anything better than the current compromise. Republicans in Congress are fundamentally opposed and united – when the bill comes up for a vote on Christmas Eve day, not a single Republican will vote for it. That means Democrats will have to reform healthcare – which accounts fully for one-sixth of the U.S. national economy – all by themselves.
That’s an enormous undertaking. If the Democrats fail, it could be decades before reform is attempted again. It will be a rare Democrat who will be willing to take on such a project again, especially after seeing what happened to someone as popular as Obama (as well as to the Clintons in the 1990s) when anyone tries to do something meant to heal a nation and its people.
This reform package may pass muster in the Senate. Obama will celebrate, but will anxiously anticipate what’s yet to come: the House of Representatives has to add its approval and that’s where Obama will have to sell liberals on the idea that half a success is still a success. And that it’s far better than the failure that now threatens everything.
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