Obama and health care, part 2

This Slate column does a pretty good job of encapsulating what health care passage means for President Barack Obama, which I wrote about yesterday. The writer's greatest perspective is how Obama used his sway to pull the Democrats along like lemmings over a cliff, knowing re-election is going to be very difficult. But that only supports what Obama says he stands for (making this a bittersweet win-win, in fact): "Given that grim landscape, Obama and congressional Democrats are making the purest test of whether voters want what they say they do —politicians who follow their conviction no matter what the consequences."

The Republicans are already prepared for the next round of fights, working their angles to put the Democrats in a bad light just as much as the Democrats are trying to do the same to them. In this battle, it's become all how you frame the results, not what the results actually are.

And, in a nice, juicy tidbit, George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum explains why this whole health care debacle has hurt the Republicans a lot — and it was mostly their fault for letting it play out this way. Pay attention especially to how he reveals that the people who got most of the Republican base upset, the talk show hosts, aren't necessarily always looking for the Republicans to do well, either. By presenting an extreme angle in holding out on the Democrats, the Republicans ended up hurting themselves in the long run as health care was passed, when a more moderate approach may have led to some of their opinions making it into law.

Health care, as a measure of a president

The passage of health care legislation looks imminent, with a simple majority vote for reconciliation looking to be the deciding factor after the long, drawn-out process that resulted in the passing of two health bills in the two Congressional houses in late 2009.

But, while people dispute the merits and necessity of such legislation, and many point to the political implications for this fall, health care's main message points back to the man who got the ball rolling: President Barack Obama.

Much has been said about whether Obama is a successful president, or whether he is keeping his campaign promises. He said he'd bring bipartisanship and change people could believe in; critics say he's sticking with his party and doing more of the same.

But I think this health care process has shown that, although he may not have reached the Messiah-like levels the electorate was expecting in November 2008, he is keeping those campaign promises pretty well.

While he has not been able to achieve much bipartisan movement, much of that can be attributed to the vociferous immovability of the Republican side, which is more apt to denounce and hedge against plans rather than think up their own. Obama did, in fact, court Republican lawmakers at the beginning of the health care process, but once erroneous attacks were made (see: death panels) and the bickering stretched out for almost a year, he did what every leader has to do at some point: Stop being popular, stop being conciliatory, and get it done.

(Even after the seismic election of Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, which showed a big change in what the American people wanted, Obama called Republican lawmakers back to hear their suggestions. But no headway was made. Whether he could have done more to cooperate with them, I don't know, but there was an effort there. And, in a fact no one will dispute, Obama has not been nearly as liberal as most Democrats hoped he would be.)

That move by Obama, to be a leader and get it done, is how he has kept his second campaign promise, of change people can believe in. "Change" is a word that can be twisted and used in many ways, but Obama made it clear in his campaign that he had some very practical ways he wanted change to be applied to American politics and the White House. For him, the biggest practical application of change was health care for all Americans. He saw this as fundamental to changing the American way of life toward the better.

So, despite the many different views, all the bickering, and the chance that a renegade senator from Massachusetts supposedly representing an unhappy American populace were threatening the change he promised, Obama kept pushing. He didn't see the public backlash as a sign that he was wrong; he saw it as a sign that his message was being misinterpreted. As president, he has been elected to make the best choices for the country, and that is why, despite all the mess that this health care process has become, he has kept pushing health care. He really thinks it's important.

Throughout the campaign, Obama promised to be a person of character, a calm voice of reason, a bull-headed champion for what needed to be done. He did that with the health care process. He got everyone involved and heard everyone's complaints, but he still pushed forward with his bottom line: to get health care to everyone, somehow. His masterful regrouping after the effort seemed lost several times showed his leadership capabilities, and his drive to keep what he sees as his promises.

Whether health care is a good idea is an entirely different matter. No matter what the politicans say, it's going to cost way more, and a lot of people are still going to be lacking. Furthermore, required health care is the first government requirement a person is susceptible to by just being alive (whereas public-use facilities, other types of insurances, and taxes all depend on something being bought, sold, or owned). This is a definite advancement of the government declaring that it knows what's best for people, and that it can make those decisions.

But without the content of this health care deal muddying the picture, it is obvious that the long process has at least revealed this: Obama is serious about what he sees as the fulfillment of his promises, and in this case, the leader figured out a way to get it done.

Hey Obama, this is the "change" Americans wanted

In his latest for the New York Times, David Brooks explains that Barack Obama ran on two major points of "change": less partisan politics, and a more activist government.

And as Brooks argues, Americans wanted the less partisan, but they never said much about the activist part.

The problem is that in his first year in office, Obama has instead heavily promoted that second part (the activist government) while not making any inroads on partisan politics. Brooks suggests he flip-flops his agenda and give the people the change they want.

When Obama came into office, the press and other politicians were talking about Obama being the next FDR, but the American people were asking for economic recovery and jobs (two totally different concepts, despite them once coinciding during a war-time president's term). Obama's priorities instead focus on ushering America into a great new age, with new programs and fixes and health care and climate change and ah ah ah!

Now, as things are worse for the people, they just want some help. As Brooks says, "Voters are in no mood for a wave of domestic transformation. The economy is already introducing enough insecurity into their lives. Unlike 1932 and 1965 [when FDR and Lyndon B. Johnson brought similar "great new ages" to America through Democratic politics], Americans do not trust Washington to take them on a leap of faith, especially if it means more spending."

There's a reason Obama is having trouble floating bills out there that people like: "Voters are not reacting to the particulars of each bill. They are reacting against the total activist onslaught." They want a fix, not an agenda. Although Obama thinks he's giving them what he promised in his speeches, they insist on results now, or at least a president who is OK with setting aside sweeping changes to make sure people can get through the next few years.

Brooks' solution? "The next challenge is to find a new project, a new one-sentence description of what this administration hopes to achieve. It is obvious: President Obama will show that this nation is governable once again. He should return to the other element in his original campaign.
That would mean first leading a campaign of brazen honesty with the American people. He could lay out the fiscal realities and explain that voters cannot continue to demand programs they are unwilling to pay for."

Obama needs to remember that, for many people who voted for him, there was an intense desire to not so much change the way America's government affected life (which is what he's trying to do now) as there was to change America's government, period. (Once government changes, than its effects will, too.) Obama promised ditching partisan politics, and finding compromises, and helping everyone get along. He said there wouldn't be backbiting, and that one party wouldn't take over the process to push its way through (speaking against the Republicans then, but that's what his party is doing now).

People genuinely want that. And Obama has the speaking chops and leadership ability to bring it. But does he really want that? Or was that a campaign slogan he used as part of his grand scheme to usher in his Democratic system?

One of Brooks' suggestions is this: "Obama could serve as a one-man model for bipartisan behavior. Right now, the Republicans have no political incentive to deal on anything. But the president could at least exemplify the kind of behavior voters want to see in their leaders."

Or, in my own words: The politicians are going to fight, bicker, be self-serving, and shoot down any hope of progress either side has, so if most measures are going to fail, why not just take the high road? Be a new kind of person. Set a new kind of example. Show the politicians, stuck in their ruts, that there's a different way of doing business. Don't tell them; don't complain about them; don't whine when progress isn't made. Show them. Show.

This, of course, starts with the outlandish spending. There are cuts that can be made. (Imagine how much money could be freed up if the extremely expensive health care battle was shelved and, shock and awe, the President focused on reducing health care costs before trying to overhaul the system. He has said saving money was the point of the whole reform, right?)

As Brooks says, "If he really put aside the publicity gimmicks, he could illustrate the difference between responsible government and the permanent campaign."

That's what people are looking for: leadership, not more politicians constantly trying to woo people. Obama has the brain to think up new solutions, the leadership to unite people and charge into new challenges, and the communicating ability to reach out to politicians of both stripes as well as the populace. He could do much good in changing the political culture without ever passing a bill.

Isn't that what many Americans were voting for in November 2008?

A final word from Brooks: "We can spend the next few years engaging in kabuki bipartisanship, in which each party puts on pseudo-events to show that the other party is rigid and rotten, or somebody can break the mold."

For that person, I suggest the President of the most powerful country in the free world.

February book reviews, part 2

Continuing reviews of books I am currently reading.

Today: Game Change by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin.

I finished a great book about the 2008 election, Game Change, about a week ago, but due to the slog of going through a 436-page book over two weeks, I haven't put together my comments until now.

That doesn't mean, however, that this book wasn't knock-out terrific.

For anyone who is at least a remote fan of politics or current events, this book is a must-read. It takes the storylines so many people saw in public in the run-up to the 2008 election and balances them with what was going on behind the scenes. Don't worry, it's not a rumor-mill hype extravaganza. In fact, it's quite the opposite: An even, methodical, well-told narrative about the story that was the 2008 election.

The characters and main plot lines have long been known, but Game Change puts in the added elements of framing in text what the candidates and their campaign aides were saying and thinking while it all happened. Furthermore, with the dust settled from all the excitement around the election and the campaigns, this book provides a simple retelling of events that could often become muddled in the thick of the race.

Halperin and Heilemann are both well-seasoned reporters, and you can tell this by the care they take with constructing their themes, chapters, and patches of dialogue. They include enough detail and plot hints to carry the story along and inform the reader but not so many that the reader feels thwatched over the head by recurring points. Even better, Halperin and Heilemann have a knack for knowing which names and points to repeat (for those not in the middle of politics) while letting other big-brand names, with their history long etched in America's mind, simply speak for themselves.

No spoilers here, but there are tons of scintillating details in the book that reveal how much of the race was how it looked like on the surface, and how much was drummed up by a candidate's campaign or the press. (Ah, the poor press. That's a theme, too.)

And best of all, Halperin and Heilemann do it all using the candidate's words and stories. Especially riveting are the mental gymnastics inside the Clinton campaign, the lunacy that is John and Elizabeth Edwards, and the sadness of Sarah Palin admitting she had no clue what she was getting into. (They're pretty light on the Palin-bashing, preferring to use the classic media approach of, "We'll let Sarah incriminate herself by just talking.")

The book is heavy on the Democratic side of the race, which makes sense considering it had more candidates, was a lot closer, and was basically repeated in the general election. But the book also gives a fresh view of John McCain that Republican diehards will appreciate when wondering what happened in November 2008.

And, to top it all off, there are some glimpses of Barack Obama that show he's not as fallible as everyone thinks. A year later, people are beginning to grasp that. But Halperin and Heilemann also capture it in their book.

The project is an excellent benchmark for closing up the 2008 scrum and looking ahead to the future, whatever that may be.

Bipartisanship: Change Obama no longer believes in?

Some gleanings from Joe Klein's column in the Feb. 1 issue of Time magazine (released before President Obama gave his State of the Union address).

-I love the idea of killing partisanship, of everyone getting along, of politics getting tossed out the window...but I've always been concerned with how Obama thinks that's actually going to happen. From early on, his way of making "change" and "hope" happen always went back to people, and as he's seen in his first year of office, people like the way those concepts sound on their ears but don't necessarily know what they'll look like in reality (or like them when they do show up in reality). Or, if they're politicians, this happens:

[Joe Klein writing] "I asked Obama how he thought his Administration was perceived by someone in the Boston suburbs who had supported him a year ago, looking for "change" — and now saw the President making deals with everyone from Joe Lieberman to the labor unions to Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska (whose special Medicaid deal was a public embarrassment) to the pro-life forces, not to mention the drug and insurance companies. 'When I promised change, I didn't promise that somehow members of Congress weren't going to be looking to try to get a project in their district or help a hospital in their neighborhood,' the President said halfheartedly."

-Klein points out that Obama hasn't done much this year to see people in their current plights, experiencing economic hardships. I agree. The ever-present campaigner hasn't been hanging out with everyday Americans very much, and what ever happened to him being like FDR and using the Internet to have fireside chats with the American people all the time?

-The health care agenda Obama so vociferously pursues is "peripheral to most Americans, who have relentlessly told pollsters, by huge majorities, that they are happy with the health care they currently receive and far more worried about other things." Exactly. Why the heck is Obama still letting Pelosi run rabid on this one? It's not like he birthed this bill himself; it's an amalgamation of all he says he hates about Washington, waiting for his signature. And the people don't even want it.

-"His has been a serious and substantive presidency. But the question, a year in, is whether it has been politically tone-deaf — and why the best presidential orator in a generation finds it so hard to explain himself to the American people." For all the things the Republicans are complaining about, has anyone noticed they're not complaining anymore about how he woos people with his words?

-One of Obama's biggest obstacles was that, even if he did want that bipartisanship thing, he wasn't even getting token participation from the elephants in the room:

"Obama came to office attempting bipartisanship. The Republicans weren't buying. 'The classic example being me heading over to meet with the House Republican caucus to discuss the stimulus,' the President said, 'and finding out that [minority leader John] Boehner had already released a statement stating, We're going to vote against the bill before we've even had a chance to exchange ideas.'"

If John McCain was the President, those Republicans would have wanted the Democrats to jump on board, since the economy was in the crapper and needed some kind of fix. But the Republicans were playing us-against-them from day one (and the Dems have been, too).

-And the clincher: Is bipartisanship the kind of change Obama no longer believes in?

"By August, the President was saying privately that he didn't know if bipartisanship was possible when the polls said that a third of the opposition party didn't even think he was an American citizen."

-Obama's comment on a question about the Middle East peace process is telling as to how his perspective has changed:

"...if we had anticipated some of these political problems on both sides earlier, we might not have raised expectations so high."

Whew.

My gut reaction is that Washington is going to stay partisan, and the Republicans are going to remain critical (of his policies, his star power, his speaking) — so why doesn't he just do his best to connect with the people? Because if they want bipartisanship enough, wouldn't they vote for others like him?

(Or did he blow that chance by being, ahem, partisan and pushing a very liberal health care bill through?)

Year two will be interesting.

A couple good New York Times reads

Here's a couple New York Times editorials I especially liked:

1. Charles Blow talks about how President Barack Obama has lost control of the mob.

2. David Brooks explains how populism, when divorced from pragmatism, doesn't solve anything. (It is good for making people feel like victims, though.)

Time magazine on airplane security

This article in Time magazine about airplane security hits on several important points, the biggest being that government cannot keep everyone safe at all times, nor should it be called to. Part of what is great about living in free America is that you are truly free, which would not necessarily be true if extraordinary measures were taken to try to ensure safety.

The key sentences, after President Obama promised more safety: "He forgets that Americans have never really wanted the government to do 'everything in its power' to keep us safe. That would make this a terrible place to live."

The article also notes that terrorism, with more of a goal of scaring everyone (a psychological threat) has already triumphed. The way to fight back is to stop that scaring, not try to stop it altogether (a hard, if not impossible, goal).

Read the whole article here.

There's four sides to every debate

I didn't read this column for the New York Times beyond its lead, but what I did read reminded me that most issues we debate today are not one side against the other, no matter who wants to pitch them as such.

Today's news media, and the piles of bloggers and pundits surrounding it, loves to act as if the way of Congress is the same way the nation is: red vs. blue, Republicans vs. Democrats, partisanship.

But I think there's a lot more variety of views out there, and something needs to be done to recognize them rather than having two very different sides alternate declaring victory over each other, even as the actual people they serve (who have mixed views) don't necessarily get what they want.

Here's an example of how a variety of different views can be approached not for their two poles but rather for the many different views within them.

In Christian realms, one of the hottest debates is that of determinism: Calvinism vs. Arminianism, predestination vs. free will. It's as high-powered a debate as, say, abortion or health care is to the American political divide.

The interesting thing about the determinism debate, however, is that it's usually not one side against the other. Yes, you have your extreme Calvinists and Arminianists, but most people draw a position somewhere in the middle. Going in line with the helpful acronymn that strict Calvinists hold to, "TULIP" (each letter standing for one of the five main tenets of Calvinism), people declare themselves four-point Calvinists, two-pointers, ULIPs, LITs, or TULPs...whichever fits the points with which they agree.

I have a feeling that many of the harsh debates filling American politics are the same. As the Times column suggests, climate change is not one side against the other. Most involved see right and wrong in both sides. (And many are sick of seeing the issue covered by media sources who act as if one side is right, ignoring that there are financial movers behind the two main views.)

Abortion is another tricky issue, where people say you have to be one or the other. But with the variety of people out there in different situations, and 50 different states and all kinds of health care plans, can you really say one way is right all the time without providing concessions for people coming from a different place than you? (I'm ignoring the morality of the issue here, which I believe is conclusive, and instead talking about the practicality of getting a nation of 300 million people to get somewhere on a topic.)

It's easiest to divide the country into red and blue, to polarize people and options through hyperbole and limited portrayal of views, but I think it may be best to apply a TULIP approach to the weightiest issues of our times.

I'd like to see the news media find a way to flesh out the varying shades of the many debates, rather than following the political leaders that try to create a me-versus-them divide. Chances are, there are a lot of people trapped in the middle with a combination of views whose voices aren't being heard.

Discussing large issues may be a hard place to start doing this, but an easy place to start would be the idea of "mandates." For example, when George W. Bush became President in 2000, Karl Rove declared that the nation had a conservative mandate. He used Bush's narrow election (in which he actually lost the popular vote) to say conservative issues should be railroaded through. Eight years later, Barack Obama's election had liberals declaring he had a mandate of his own (although his win was still by a relatively slim margin).

In fact, a little flare-up occurred when conservative (psycho) Ann Coulter dared to say this year that America was a mostly conservative nation. Democrats pointed to election results to say the country was mostly liberal. But with the vote so close, why is either side declaring ownership? A mandate comes from a wide majority, and too many factors went into this election to be able to declare much of a mandate for anything. This is especially true when you look at public opinion now toward a lot of Obama's principles; people like some of what he supports, but that doesn't mean they want him to do whatever he likes.

Throughout the election season, it was revealed again and again that there are a heck of a lot of independents out there, and it's less about political divides than individual principles. Hence, TULIP.

Mandates? No. A definite answer what to do about climate change? No. Health care? Well, that one you can label a win for the Dems, since they had to basically use their party majority to override since they didn't want to be the group that didn't close the deal on such a controversial domestic issue once they got the numeric advantage.

Let's challenge those discussing our nation and its issues to get rid of red and blue, instead finding out a way to figure out what all this purple is saying.

from Slate

Today, from Slate:

A great photo gallery of Harlem
Obama's latest Facebook feed

That's enough from you, Cheney

Anyone else tired of hearing Dick Cheney constantly criticize the Obama administration and act like the country is seconds away from disaster? I'll leave aside who is right and who is wrong on this one and instead say, Cool it, Cheney. There are many reasons you shouldn't be blabbing, but the one that really irks me is that your time in the sun is over. Let the Repubicans deal with Obama, and at least give them some time before you act like you can know whether their policies are right or not (it's been four months).

Bush is the wise one here.

Obama supports the press

Read Obama's speech to journalists at the White House Correspondents Dinner here.