The Nation: Obama Must Reclaim The Debate
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President Barack Obama gestures upon his arrival to deliver a speech on education at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va., Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2009. Gerald Herbert/AP hide caption
President Barack Obama gestures upon his arrival to deliver a speech on education at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va., Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2009.
Gerald Herbert/APBarack Obama's genius was to run a campaign that understood how much Americans wanted change. On Wednesday evening when he speaks to a joint session of Congress President Obama will need to reclaim that genius. And he will need to reclaim the debate from those who would deny the urgency of real healthcare reform for the millions insured, underinsured and uninsured.
Obama will be most persuasive if he speaks with passion about his principles and priorities--and draws some lines in the sand. A key line is support of a strong public option--not as a liberal litmus test but as a critical part of expanding coverage, reining in costs and disciplining rapacious insurance companies. He must explain in clear and simple language that the alternative--a "trigger"--is a trap to kill healthcare reform; and that even if "trigger" conditions are met years from now, big insurance companies will start the fight all over again to stop the public option from going into effect. And by any reasonable measure conditions for triggering a public plan have already been met because insurance companies have failed to rein in costs and expand coverage! As for those ballyhooed nonprofit coops, Obama should explain why they won't have any real bargaining leverage to get lower prices because they'll be too small. Define the public plan for what it is: pragmatic, principled and all-American in how it privileges choice and competition.
Obama must invoke history. He should place himself squarely in the tradition of those reform presidents--Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson--who labored hard for universal healthcare. Remind people that the Democrats are the party which brought them the two most popular domestic government programs--social security and Medicare--which have improved the condition of their lives in the 20th century. Tell people: "We brought you Medicare. They opposed it. Now we're trying to fix the healthcare system. And--sound familiar? Once again, they are opposing it."
Obama should also explain why bipartisanship ain't what it used to be. This is a party out to cripple or kill reform, and with it the future success of Obama's Presidency. As the eminent Roosevelt scholar Jean Edward Smith recently argued, "This fixation on securing bipartisan support for healthcare reform suggests that the Democratic party has forgotten how to govern and the White House has forgotten how to lead."
The president should challenge the Blue Dogs. Place the burden on them to get out of the way of the majority in favor of a comprehensive plan. The question isn't whether the progressive majority is unreasonably resisting reform to save the public option. The question is whether a small minority of conservative Democrats will sabotage reform simply to stop the public option. Do the Blue Dogs wish to cripple their own President in his first year in office for seeking an objective that has been the stated goal of their party since the Truman administration?
Obama must lead the charge and rally the people who swept him into the White House. And challenge the Democrats. Make it clear to the Democratic Caucus in general, and to the Blue Dogs in particular, that for the sake of the country they must vote for cloture so that a bill that will accomplish substantive reform can have an up-or-down vote on the floor. Don't heed those who counsel incrementalism or bipartisanship at all cost. The art of the possible is not the same as the art of incrementalism. And healthcare reform enacted by a Democratic majority is still meaningful reform.
If President Obama can boldly lay out those principles and priorities that inspired the movement which swept him into office, Americans will stand and fight with him to make the changes this nation so desperately needs.