Asymmetric Legislation And Health Care

Ben Domenech: Obama Had An Opportunity To Divide His Opposition. How Did He Miss His Chance?

(CBS)  Ben Domenech is editor in chief of The New Ledger.

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I've been reading a lot about the history of the 15th and 16th century in the Mediterranean lately, so permit a fanciful political comparison for a moment. Imagine a large, lumbering ship at sea. It is majestic and powerful, tall as a skyscraper, a city on the waves, carrying vast stores within. Once it reaches top speed, it is almost impossible to stop its progress. There are problems, though. The size of this ship makes it easy for anyone to spot on the open water; it requires an enormous amount of maintenance and defense to survive even a brief journey with a strong breeze behind it, and its goliath frame prevents an ability to turn or change directions without great effort. For all its grandeur, it makes for an excellent slow-moving target, while smaller craft can bend the waves to their will without attracting notice.

Throughout the 2008 campaign, the Obama team proved itself exceptional at applying tried-and-true political lessons to utilize new and innovative tools. It's not so much that they had groundbreaking ideas about politics - it's that they were applying old ideas about grassroots, branding, and voter motivation in groundbreaking ways, fueled by a simply massive amount of money.

If there's one thing that has surprised me about the past three months, it's been President Obama's decision to avoid the innovative tactics that led him to political success. Instead of adopting a similar approach to legislative battles in Washington, it's as if they threw out the sleek new playbook and went back to the wishbone offense as soon as they got to the Oval Office.

I don't understand the decision. With powerful majorities on both sides of the Hill, now would be the time to see if innovative approaches to passing legislation can work - especially in the case of health care insurance reform.

Consider: what if instead of making one massive bill, and sinking his effort into it, Obama should have split his reforms into a package of multiple legislative pieces. Instead of one large ship, send a dozen agile small ones to break the lines - with a list of standalone bills that include a public option, an individual mandate, medical malpractice reform, new insurance regulations, and a litany of other points along the ideological range. The effect of such a tactic would be to divide the opposition: with a properly constructed package, the Chamber of Commerce would support half of the legislation offered, and other business interests would be able to support even more.

Call it an act of asymmetric legislation: using Obama's prominence and ability to sell a package of ideas to the American people, without uniting them together in a form so complex and so certain to contain weaknesses that it exposes the entire legislation to critical attacks. It avoids the demanding wheeling-and-dealing of amendments that increases proportionally to a bill's size, it satisfies the left flank by providing up-or-down votes on their issues, and it gives the Blue Dogs cover by allowing them to have pro-reform votes that won't force them to lose their job.

Rather than uniting his diverse opponents on the matter by presenting the vast, slow-moving target and trying to run the line at breakneck speed, I believe Obama would be able to achieve a great deal more in bending health care in America in his preferred direction if he had deployed this multiple bills tactic. Obama's still far more popular than the Republicans in Congress, and his speech last night gave an overall impression of frustration that he's been unable to fully utilize his post-election popularity to achieve his ends. The sheer size of this piece of legislation has given its opponents multiple aspects to lock onto and assault, from individual mandate taxes, to government funded abortion, to death panels, to deficits.

Obama's hardly alone in making this mistake: the decision to go "comprehensive" was almost assuredly what destroyed President Bush's immigration bill, and half a dozen other similar endeavors come to mind.

Why do presidents and their staffers still think in the same terms as FDR? Legislation is crafted differently now, and constituents respond differently and with greater speed than ever before. In a situation where this bill had been presented not as sweeping change, but as several key gradual reforms, I believe that Obama could have passed a great deal of it with only minor personal backlashes. The lightning rod parts of the package would be rejected - and would have inspired some angry response, yes - but he'd still have gotten 60% of what he wanted, if not more. As it stands, last night's speech seems to open the door for backtracking on much more than that.

A more innovative approach may have allowed President Obama to achieve more while expending less political capital. The one big ship strategy packs everything together, and it's harder to avoid the rocks even when you see them coming - and god help the captain if he starts catching the smaller ships in his wake.

[sjc_1]

The Patriot Act was over 1000 pages and the Republicans in power at the time gave the Democrats 24 hours to read it before the vote. LOTS gets hidden in there when that happens. H.R. 3200 is online and I have read some of it and looked at the costs and summaries. This is not done behind closed doors and rushed through. After more than 70 years of kicking this can down the road and having it get worse every day, we can now deal with it and have a more honest and fair system for everyone.

[sjc_1]

I think the President wanted Congress to work out the details. Congress is the representative body of all the people of the nation and should formulate something this big. Now that leadership is required to bring it all together, the President is stepping up and taking responsibility. If the critics want to call it "Obamacare" then they can, because he is the one that has to make it all work.

[jimmyc1955]

I think Obama looked at Hillaries super secret closed door nobody gets to see anything until we tell you what you get approach and decided to let congress do it as much as he could.

The problem with multiple, single purpose bills is they won't hide all the bonuses and give aways to favored friends like a 1200 page bill can.

I agree if we had gone for an approach of multiple single purpose bills we could have had a more transparent view of each and made valid decisions and at least we could have had some reform.

But for a president who said he was going to have the most transparent administration in history it sure is opaque and foggy. Secret meetings with health care and insurance companies the the LA Times reported sure weren't transparent.

Why don't we know what they really want and what it will really cost and who is involved now.

What we don't want is more debt - we just can't afford it. Unfortunate as this may be - when you have a choice of making the house payment or buying the 52 in LED TV - our president decided he wanted the TV. Maybe we pay the house off - or at least down before we decide to spend more.

[pigsinlipstick]

LET'S BE HONEST, IF YOU CAN FIND AN HONEST REPUBLI'CON' TO DISCUSS THIS

WITH, THEY, THE REPUBLI'CLOWN's, DO NOT WANT TO DISCUSS THIS SUBJECT, THEY

SIMPLY WANT TO KILL ANYTHING THAT THAT 'UPPITY BLACK' WANTS TO GET DONE.

THE GOP HACVE BECOME THE PARTY OF RACISM,


WHERE DO YOU GUYS THINK THAT

THE "KKK" WENT, DID YOU REALLY THINK THEY JUST DISAPPEARED?

[jimmyc1955]

I love guys like you. Ignorant, bigoted, closed minded, angry and irrational. I put up this post and then a post from some right wing nut job about birth certificates and frankly - the offset each other. Now if we could get all the ranting idiots out of here so a real discussion could take place we would all be better off.

[Vet_Turner]

I believe the Right would still have hampered health care reform even if it has been chopped into many pieces. It would have also allowed Congress to stop after something was done rather then actually push through something meaningful.

I say time to play hardball with the unreasonable repubs and push the bill home. Let Glen Beck interview the President at the Whitehouse and watch Beck melt.

[Stevenapoli7]

Great story. Couldn't agree more.