In a Nation of Incrementalists
Earlier this week, Andrew Sullivan published a round up of reader reactions to what happened in Massachusetts. This excerpt, from a Canadian reader’s comment, stuck with me …
I cannot understand how the American public can forget the Republican record so quickly. We all knew that the Democrats would not govern perfectly, but how can a president that won such a landslide only a year ago receive such a short time to prove his ability to govern?
Ditto that question, I thought at the time. Today, David Brooks offers an answer …
Instead of building trust in government, the Democrats have magnified distrust. The country already believed Washington is out of touch with its core concerns. So while most families were concerned about jobs, Democrats in Washington spent nine months arguing about health care. The country was already tired of self-serving back-room deals, so the Democrats negotiated a series of dirty deals with the pharmaceutical industry, the unions and certain senators. Americans already felt Washington doesn’t understand their fears and insecurities. So at the moment when economic insecurity was at its peak, the Democrats in Washington added another layer of insecurity by threatening to change everything at once.
You can argue that Brooks’ answer is more about Congress than Obama. But Obama deferred much to Congress during his first year. And when a President does that — even if it’s the right thing to do, the Constitution-honoring thing to do – he can be boosted or burned by the result. Obama was clearly burned. Of course, he was not entirely passive in the process; he was the one, after all, who sought a sweeping, transformational, FDR-ish moment in health care reform, despite the fact that we have clearly become a country no longer capable of dealing rationally or patiently with the prospect of sweeping, transformational, FDR-ish reform.
I read this week — somewhere, though I can no longer find the source; maybe a reader can help — that Bill Clinton said he wished he had first tackled welfare reform, to build up his fiscal-sanity credentials, before he tackled health care reform. That seems consistent with Brooks’ larger point, namely: In anxious times, Presidents (and Members of Congress) should move cautiously: calm people’s tattered nerves, seek incremental change.
Granted, facing the prospect of the next Great Depression, Obama couldn’t afford to be an incrementalist on everything. The stimulus bill had to happen; and despite its detractors, it clearly helped. However, what’s equally clear, is that the stimulus bill (coupled with the auto industry bailouts) was the only sweeping change (set of changes) a majority of the American people were going to tolerate. Yes, hindsight is 20-20, but you have to wonder how much better off Obama and the Democrats would have been if — at that point, post-stimulus, post-auto-bailouts — they had slow-rolled other reforms and focused more of their attention on pushing bipartisan deficit commissions and the like. Big change followed by calming, shore-up-the-foundation measures.
Granted, Republican leaders might have still complained, but this really isn’t about them. It’s about the American electorate, which is not predominantly progressive or conservative, but (understandably) confused and concerned; wanting help but not too much of it from Washington.
Don’t get me wrong. I wanted transformational change on health care. I still do. My wife told me the story this week of a high school classmate with whom she recently re-connected. The woman’s husband had been downsized in the wake of InBev’s take-over of Anheuser-Bush; as a result, the family lost their health insurance. Looking to replace their employer-provided insurance with their own family policy, they have now been rejected — not once, not twice, but repeatedly. And for what reason? Pre-existing conditions. To make matters worse, while those conditions might have been pre-existing, they were apparently not recurring; they were relics of years-ago ails and accidents that had not been repeated. Is this now the new, reigning definition of “pre-existing”? Anything that ever happened in your past that might conceivably happen again?
Such stories scare the hell out of me; they should scare the hell out of all us. But despite that fear, we have to come to terms with the fact that transformational change on health care (maybe on all issues) is probably not going to happen, not for awhile at least, no matter how much cheerleading/scolding is done by Paul Krugman, Andrew Sullivan, et. al.
The days of FDR’s New Deal and JFK’s Race to the Moon are gone. It’s time to deal with this reality and get creative, asking and answering what sequence of smaller steps might be taken in a nation deeply and perhaps permanently conditioned to prefer incremental change.
11 Responses to “In a Nation of Incrementalists”
“Obama was clearly burned. Of course, he was not entirely passive in the process; he was the one, after all, who sought a sweeping, transformational, FDR-ish moment in health care reform, despite the fact that we have clearly become a country no longer capable of dealing rationally or patiently with the prospect of sweeping, transformational, FDR-ish reform.”
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We now already have several public healthcare entities. The VA, Medicare and ER visits. Having three separate entities is wasteful and combining them in one super single-payer will reduce waste by combining clerical costs of the three, reduce taxpayer waste further on focusing on cheaper prevention instead of triage as in the 40 million now leaning on overburdened ERs.
The GOP wants, essentially, to keep the already universal care more expensive to favor BigPharma. We want to make universal care accountable, visible and streamlined. Insurance execs have had their day in the sun. Hope they invested well. If they were smart and saw this day coming, they would've taken all the money they're using to sway Congress, buy advertising and pay professional internet bloggers salaries and invested in green energy or something that also is inevitable.
Their stupidity in the financial world can no longer be our liability to bear.
The Cure for Bush turned out to be worse than the disease.
Obama is the Free Lunch salesman of the century. All the problems of health care etc were to be solved using “somebody elses” money. Unfortunately that can't be done and the Democrats/Obama have proven it. It's time to stop sobbing and get back to reality based government.
I hope the President agrees; it would be better for everyone that way.
You're kidding, right? Isn't it obvious that anything Obama attempted in place of HCR would have met the same kind of stonewalling and hyperkinetic opposition from the Republicans? And that it would have had the same effect? This was their strategy of choice — several of them even went on the record saying so.
I do think that Team Obama did an inadequate job of overcoming these intentional obstacles, but the idea that he could have had an effect using the middle-of-the-road tactics you describe ignores reality. A poll just came out showing that a larger number of Americans opposed HCR and don't know why than because they think it goes too far or that it doesn't go far enough. What does that tell you about the electorate?
Isn't that the same electorate that voted Obama and the Democrats into office? So your theory is that they were brilliant in 2008 and are confused now?
I'd say they were sold a free lunch which turned out to be free of calories as well.
Da Mav:
I wouldn't say that it took much brilliance to vote Democrat in 2008; I wouldn't even say that confusion reigns supreme now (most voters, after all, don't follow politics the way you or I do); but when over a third of respondents say they are against a policy but don't know why, then it's obvious the anti-reform forces are better at sowing doubt than the pro-reform forces are at cultivating trust. Doubt is always more easily achieved than trust.
BTW: we don't agree on the policy but I really like that tag line.
Generally agree with your comment, but the burden of 'proof' should always be on those trying to make the sale — especially with the kind of price tag that this item carries.
My concern is also with the many people who think they understand it but don't. And there are plenty of them on both sides of the issue. Health care finance is an immensely complex area on which even the experts disagree. Politics thrives on the simplistic. Just part of life as it is.
thanks for liking the tag
Life would be boring if we all agreed on everything.
So while most families were concerned about jobs, Democrats in Washington spent nine months arguing about health care.
Yes, but that doesn't mean Americans didn't want health care reform. It means they didn't want it to take nine months to get one bill through Congress. If Obama had pushed Congress to get a progressive hcr bill with a public option through Congress without feeling they had to placate everyone who didn't like it, it would have been fine with Americans, especially once they saw how well it was working.
It means they didn't want it to take nine months to get one bill through Congress.”
Nine months may seem like a long time for this baby, but HCR is far more complicated than anyone is willing to admit. The gestation period should be 18 months (an elephant baby) of serious bipartisanship and industry study and cooperation (laughing).
The Democrats are out of touch with tax paying voters so we're rejecting them. They either come to terms with us or they can expect to be removed from power. They've defied our trust. They shown they can't govern. We've lost all faith in them. Yet worse, their arrogance continues to be fueled by Democrat ideologs hell-bent on shoving an unpalatable political/social agenda down the tax paying voters' throats.
I laughed at the Democrats and others who have suddenly “discovered” that maybe health care “reform” should be limited to actual reform measures, and all the crazier overreach discarded, and that the same approach might be considered as well for the next “stimulus” and other economy measures, that ought to take precedence over health care reform, and that going too far left is counterproductive and all the other silliness that has happened this year ought to be avoided in the future. What I have stated time after time after time about health care reform, about sensible stimulus measures, about ditching the far-lefty lunacy, is now, suddenly, a brilliant “discovery” by Dems and by liberals in DC, on line, on the radio.
Congratulations, fools! Better laughably late than never.
Liberals discover the idea of only actually reforming health care, just making sense with the stimulus, not going so far left the mainstream recoils and worse.
[gasp] “Columbus discovers Spain!”
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