Convening of the new Congress brings back a long-age image, a Manhattan store called the Live-and-Let-Live Deli with a sign in the window: “Out of Business.”
The proximate cause is literal–the White House’s backing off from a provision in health care reform that would allow doctors to include end-of-life discussions with Medicare patients. Whether this is in response to the “death panel” scare raised by Dr. Sarah Palin and other GOP advocates for the elderly, no one will say, but Dr. John Boehner has diagnosed such consultations as a step “down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia.”
In a broader sense, that old phrase of tolerance for others, “Live and let live,” is as far from the new atmosphere in Washington as it can possibly be. Now that he has the power of House Speaker, Boehner is faced with reconciling the fireballs elected in November who want to tear down everything yesterday with the realities of what a responsible legislative body can and can’t do.
“They have no sense of the limits on a party that controls only one of the three seats of power. Managing that relationship is going to be difficult,” says a former GOP House member.