“Partisanship with a purpose”
E. J. Dionne’s column on last night’s vote is online now. The passage of health-care reform, he says, is a major victory for Democrats:
To understand how large a victory this is, consider what defeat would have meant. In light of the president’s decision to gamble all of his standing to get this bill passed, its failure would have crippled his presidency. The Democratic Congress would have become a laughingstock, incapable of winning on an issue that has been central to its identity since the days of Harry Truman.
This is why Republicans decided to put everything they had into an effort to defeat the measure. They said its passage would hurt the Democrats in November’s elections. They knew that its failure would have haunted Democrats for decades.
It remains to be seen how well Democrats will capitalize on their success, of course. A recent New Yorker article by George Packer quoted the prolife Democratic congressman Tom Perriello (who was frustrated about public perception of the Recovery Act): “I’ve never been a part of any organization that was so bad at talking about its accomplishments.” As my Great Aunt Katie would say: You got that right, driver.
Packer’s article, “Obama’s Lost Year,” is available online for New Yorker subscribers only. (It appeared in the March 15 issue of that magazine.) Allow me to quote a paragraph I found particularly insightful, and one that I think is a fitting companion to Dionne’s column today:
The stalled effort to pass health-care reform has dominated analysis of the Administration’s difficulty in securing its agenda. But the key to Obama’s first year is the Recovery Act. It set the pattern for everything that followed: intelligent but cautious policymaking; legislative compromises that watered down the bill’s impact without enlisting more than a tiny number of Republicans; an immediate campaign by opposition politicians and media to declare the program a failure; a weak, uncoordinated Administration effort to explain and champion the stimulus package; gradual public disillusionment. A year later, Obama has few options left in the battle with stubborn joblessness — opinion in Washington has turned against another ambitious spending bill. “The elites in the media and the Senate are already out of the depression,” Perriello said.
Packer has written a few follow-up posts to that article on his New Yorker blog — and the most recent (from March 16) begins:
There are two columnists I read in order to know what I think: E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post and John Judis of The New Republic. Throughout Obama’s first year, both of them kept their eye on the higher stakes, the historical test of his Presidency: whether the new Administration would begin to make government work on behalf of ordinary people, and whether Americans would see and believe it. Next to this, Scott Brown and the Nobel Prize and even Guantánamo will be footnotes to the age of Obama.
One more reason to read Dionne and Packer together!
Also, don’t miss David Gibson’s analysis at Politics Daily of the bishops’ role in all of this: “How the Bishops Lost, Even as Their Cause Prevailed.”
Wonderful work by President Obama and Speaker Pelosi!
A great day for America!
The single most important point from the Gibson article:
“For decades the bishops have pointed to the Republican Party as representing the pro-life position in American politics, and the Democrats the “party of death,” as many of them put it. Yet when the chips were down and the bishops needed a vote, they could not summon a single Republican to support them, either in the Senate or, in the end, in the House.”
Amazing that the bishops support universal health care but were the ones fiercely opposing this bill. The Catholic right does not support universal health care yet the bishops went to bed with them. They lambasted Pelosi. Now it appears they should take lessons from her. So they lost the right and the left. They seem to have an identity problem.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/34786_Page3.html
Ah, I see. The Democrats voted for this as an act of courage in the best interests of the country, but the GOP opposed it because they needed to thwart a brilliant dem victory.
Typical Dionne.
“Ah, I see. The Democrats voted for this as an act of courage in the best interests of the country, but the GOP opposed it because they needed to thwart a brilliant dem victory.”
Courage implies risk. Who took the political risks here?
I see this war as a soccer game. Democrats 1, Republicans 0, with Stupak as the Democrat’s goalie, Cao as the Republican one. Once more history shows that one person with hope and courage can make a tremendous difference. (Of course, they might both lose in November. Sigh.)
According to Dionne, no one took a risk.
If you are a democrat things would be worse politically if you didn’t vote for this bill. So how is voting in your best interests a risk?
The arrogance of the left is astounding.
If people disagree with us, they must be ill informed or morally bankrupt. People don’t object to the Recovery Act becauase it did not produce what was promised, or because it was wasteful (even if you buy the administration’s outrageous claims the per job cost if you include interest on the debt is hunderds and hundreds of thousands), nope, they just didn’t “sell” it well.
(A comment offering a sweeping theory of the Virtuous Right vs. the Arrogant, Dissembling Left — and simultaneously objecting to being unfairly categorized by ideology. Typical Hannaway.)
Typical Sean
“If people disagree with us, they must be ill informed or morally bankrupt.
Sean –
What other reasons can there possibly be for *any* sincere person disagreeing with someone else other than thinking they are mistaken or somehow dishonest? What other criteria are there for being wrong?
“This is why Republicans decided to put everything they had into an effort to defeat the measure. They said its passage would hurt the Democrats in November’s elections. They knew that its failure would have haunted Democrats for decades.”
Another reason is because opposition to this issue has been central to the identity of the Conservative caucus of the Republican Party since the days of Barry Goldwater. So if one were to adopt Mr. Dionne’s logic for the sake of argument, one would say the Conservative caucus will be haunted for decades.
” A recent New Yorker article by George Packer quoted the prolife Democratic congressman Tom Periello (who was frustrated about public perception of the Recovery Act): “I’ve never been a part of any organization that was so bad at talking about its accomplishments.” As my Great Aunt Katie would say: You got that right, driver.”
I assume Rep. Packer has no family members who are included in the four million who have lost their jobs since the current President was elected. He is very blessed. Not every family sees his blessings as an accomplishment however, especially those who have multiple family members unemployed.
Oops! I meant Rep. Periello.
Mollie & Ann
Can’t people just be wrong?
This really comes down to a difference in world view and about human nature. Most conservatives believe people generally have the ability and desire to take care of themselves and society best serves them by allowing them the greatest opportunity to do so. Liberals believe the purpose of society is to serve the needs of people and don’t mind ceding power to central authority to do that.
It really comes down to what kind of world you want to live in.
What I resent is the presumption that people don’t agree with you because they don’t understand the brilliance of your ideas or they are just evil. If you want to know why this was a party line vote that’s it.
MAT, I understand that you may not be able to read the whole article. But if you haven’t, it’s probably a bad idea to make assumptions about Tom Perriello’s priorities. Or his family. (P.S. I misspelled his name above — fixing now.)
“But if you haven’t, it’s probably a bad idea to make assumptions about Tom Perriello’s priorities. Or his family.”
Making assumptions are a bad idea? As you know I am not that well educated, but it is my understanding making assumptions, and then noting an assumption is being made by phrases such as “assume”, is a routine form of communication. I also believe the assumption was a rather reasonable given the quote selected and the lack of free availability to the source article. You appear to have information that would disprove the assumption but are withholding it, so it would be gracious of you to share it and I can revise my assumption.
Also, I think you mis-read my comment. I do not believe anywhere is the word “priorities” mentioned or any synonym for priority, either singular or plural.
Forget it, MAT. I am not playing this game with you.
Sean, people can just think differently, but I don’t think it “just” comes down to a difference in world view. What has been so disheartening throughout this debate has been the sight of Republicans running away from a bill that was largely if not nearly primarily a clone of the Massachusetts reform, which itself was modeled on a proposal of conservative think tanks as a response to the Clinton reform proposal in 1993 as the fairest and most viable market based approach to reform.
My health care, and I would venture, yours, are subsidized by the government. My brother and his wife, self-employed or employed in low wage jobs get no subsidy for health care of any kind. This isn’t just the effect of world views. It’s the effect of policy choices and taxpayer dollars that fund health care for some, which in turn does quite a bit to make it less and less affordable for others.
What to do about that is indeed, a conundrum. I don’t expect agreement on everything, but I don’t feel required to put up with rank dishonesty, like Republicans piously crying about cutting Medicare, as if their long-term goal for some time hasn’t been to cut it even more if not eliminate it entirely, or the refusal to admit that most of their constituents are already benefiting from taxpayer largesse that they are fiercely protecting.
Barbara
First, while there are many similarities, it is not the same as the 1993 ideas. Those efforts did not include the creation of hundreds of new government boards and officials. Also, and most importantly, those efforts included other measures designed to improve the market and generate competition to lower costs. Finally, we weren’t on the edge of bankruptcy in 1993.
You are right about Massachusetts – you are welcome to the comparison. It is doing what Obama care will do, conventiently, after the next two elections, and it is driving the Commonwealth to bankruptcy. Just last week the governor announced a $300million shortfall. Moreover, insurance rates in Massachusetts have ballooned. The good news for us is that under the House “fix” the rest of the country will becoming to our aid and propping up the system with your tax dollars. Thanks very much.
If you want dishonesty, why not ask why, if these are such grand ideas they aren’t implementing most of them for years. In Massachusetts, we did it in a year. Why will it take five or more to get this monstrosity in place? Why is it conveniently after the next two elections? Don’t the dems want us to experience the wonderfulness of their ideas?
The honest way to have dealt with this would have been for the liberals to push for a single payer system – that at least makes some kind of sense – rather than this nonsense that I think they hope will ultimately force us to go that way.
Sean, I do see the world differently. Basically, health care costs are going up regardless of universal coverage and lots of states are on the verge of bankruptcy — Arizona, with some of the stingiest welfare benefits, being among the worst off.
So here is how I see it: what we have now is rationing by failure to be included in any social group deemed to be too important or unfair or influential to ignore — veteran, senior, poor, etc.
I fully expect costs to go up because doctors and health care providers are maximalist rent seekers, like the free market tells them to be. And I fully expect and hope that the way we deal with cost increases is to distribute the pain by some other means — like finding new ways to pay for services and being much more diligent about payment policies in general — than denying coverage 100% to the less well-connected. That is what is off the table, as it really should have been long ago.
I don’t know that I agree that single payer is the best way to go. I see pluses (lower administrative costs) and minuses (too much interest group driven micromanagement from Congress) Obviously, some do. I am willing to give this a shot.
I don’t think it was dishonesty to go this route. It isn’t dishonest to be practical. And many were very honest, and very disappointed with this proposal. It may not be what the Heritage Foundation proposed, exactly, but it’s pretty darn close.
“Can’t we just be mistaken?”
Sean ==
My answer to your question is: how could it be possible that we can “just be mistaken”? It’s like asking “can diamonds just get soft?” or “can cats just start barking?” There is *always* a cause for everything. So my answer is, No, we can’t “just be wrong”.
Let me hasten to add that I agree that arrogance is obnoxious, plus it’s counter-productive because it closes people’s minds down. But the personal obnoxiousness of a debater has nothing to do with the value of his/her arguments, and that holds for both liberals and conservatives. And neither does the obnoxiousness of an argument falsify it either. Unpleasantness is not usually a good reason to quit talking unless all the minds are clamped shut.
I hasten to add that I’m very glad that you participate here. There’s part of me that is quite conservative, so I’m always glad when you present my views (on some matters) in your usual succinct way. I also appreciate the fact that you’re disinclined to called names. I get so tired fo the rhetoric here I’m tempted to call names myself as a matter of principle :-)
I don’t know just how to say this, because I don’t want you to think that it’s directed at you. But your question about being mistaken brings out what I think is a very, very important problem manifesting itself in the furor over passage of the health care bill. I mean the very painful problem we humans have admitting our own mistakes. In the furor over Stupak’s partial reversal, many conservative pro-lifers have apparently gone balistic. What has caused that? My hypothesis is that many of them have finally realized that they too are quite capable of making huge mistakes. They trusted Stuupak mightily, and one way or another, they were wrong.
The Piagetians tell us that there is a stage in adolescent pschological development when we feel very strongly that our group/authority figures, are *the* wise ones of the world. To think that they can be mistaken is anathema. Unfortunately, some people never get past this stage. In my experience while most people grow up at least to some extent, the fear of having to admit being wrong about these fundamental allegiances can cause emotional panic, with some people turning cynic while other unfortunate people go into an emotional meltdown and hold their old beliefs more stubbornly than ever. Consider the stubbornness of many fundamentaalist concerning the literal interpretation of the Bible and evolution. As I see them, they seem terribly frightened of mistakes because to admit the errors leaves them in a state of uncertainty which they cannot tolerate emotionally.
As I see it, the general problem is this: As children we are taught to always tell the truth, and that requires that we tell the truth about our own mistakes and self-deceptions. But as we get older we discover that our mistakes are not all just small, childish ones, but we can make some very big mistakes as well. But for some people, mistakes about basic moral principles or about faith, or mistakes about people they wrongly trusted, and the possibility that they can be mistaken about their political commitments, all these things are extremely threatening to their estimate of their own competence to make sense of the world. When on occasion reality pushes back and forces them to see that they *were* wrong about something important, some of them panic, and they grasp at any argument, however specious, that might shore up their shaken world views. In their grief, some of them are reduced to extremely ugly name-calling.
Facing the possibility — and reality — of our making fundamental mistakes is not limited to conservatives, I know. We all have the same problem. It’s called being human, only human. Enter arrogance. When we pretend to ourselves that we can’t be mistaken we assume God’s mantle. And that’s the biggest mistake of all.
How do you explain the hysteria surrounding Rep. Stupak? Or do you have a theory? Or more than one? What is causing this?
(Sorry to go on at such great lengths about this, but I think this problem of not admitting mistakes, whatever the causes, needs to be aired.)
Good for the Democrats. But, really, this appears to me to be more significant than its mere impact on each political party. Congratulations, Americans!