Obama and Baracknophobia
On break in a remote getaway, where I was disconnected from the 24 x 7 grid, it was easy to imagine that the passions triggered by health care would have eased, making way for serious debate about a serious public policy question. Silly me.
After catching up on a week's worth of emails, YouTube videos and recorded cable programming, this much is clear: If anything, the name-calling has increased in ferocity. Maybe you remember things differently but I can't recall this kind of lip-quivering rage during the 1993-1994 attempts to reform health care. (Check out this synposis by Derek Bok of Harvard University explaining how Bill Clinton blew it. Also, credit the Clinton administration's opponents for doing a better job of making their case to a confused public though Bok notes that a University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communications study found that "59 percent of all the television ads were misleading.")
Had President Clinton demonstrated better leadership, might his push for health care reform proved successful? Impossible to answer conclusively but the history lesson is there. All the more surprising, then, that President Obama, who obviously studied the record of his predecessor, didn't come out swinging very hard until now. The real fire came from conservative journals, such as the National Review and the Weekly Standard which offered up pungent and compelling arguments - subsquently picked up by conservative cable television hosts and the blogosphere - opposing `Obamacare' as a bad idea.
So it is that with polls suggesting slipping support, the president is finally using his bully pulpit to counter critics. (Here's the text of President Obama's Town Hall meeting in Grand Junction, Colo. on Saturday.) And Sunday, writing in Sunday's New York Times, the president gives it another shot, urging Americans to "make sure that we talk with one another, and not over one another." In addition to the standard stump speech, which you would expect, the president also tries to defuse the rage which has attended some of the town hall meetings during Congress's August recess. He writes:
"We are bound to disagree, but let's disagree over issues that are real, and not wild misrepresentations that bear no resemblance to anything that anyone has actually proposed. This is a complicated and critical issue, and it deserves a serious debate. Despite what we've seen on television, I believe that serious debate is taking place at kitchen tables all across America. In the past few years, I've received countless letters and questions about health care. Some people are in favor of reform, and others have concerns. But almost everyone understands that something must be done. Almost everyone knows that we must start holding insurance companies accountable and give Americans a greater sense of stability and security when it comes to their health care."
Fair enough. There are always going to be honest disagreements between honest men and women about how to best run the country. But the rage is rising and I wonder whether anyone still believes this remains a routine disagreement between left and right. The opposition to the president is more than an amalgam of discontent over budget deficits and bailouts, government spending and the choice of Supreme Court appointees. Almost from the day the Obama administration took office, the refrain has gotten louder and louder, egged on by a fringe pushing rumors that Obama was a Muslim or that Obama was a Kenyan national and thus in violation of the U.S. Constitution. when you step back from the day-to-day, it's clear that health care reform is only the latest reason for Obama's most unyielding critics to vent. With angry demands about wanting back "their America," what is it that they really want to say?