For those of you who haven't read Karen Tumulty's TIME Interview with Obama that was posted yesterday, you should. It's a good interview where Obama explains and expresses his views regarding the healthcare battle, i.e. its more than the boilerplate talking points that we see in some interviews. But the best news, at least for me, that came out of the interview was a more subtle message he sent about his views towards the Co-op idea, similar to what he said on his conference call to bloggers.
Excerpt below the fold:
I would say, Karen, actually we defined it(the public option) fairly clearly in terms of what we thought would work best. What I said was, is that it shouldn't be something that's simply a taxpayer-subsidized system that wasn't accountable, but rather had to be self-sustaining through premiums and that had to compete with private insurers.
And would a co-op fit that definition?
Well, I think in theory you can imagine a cooperative meeting that definition. Obviously sort of the legal structure of it is less important than practically how can it operate. There are concerns that in the past, attempts at setting up co-ops have not been successful because they just haven't been able to get off the ground; sort of the start-up energy involved may not exist if you're doing a state-by-state co-op effort as opposed to a broad national plan.
So when you see this answer you may or may not think its that much of an indictment on the Co-op plan coming from Obama. But you have to understand how Obama answers these issues, and coming from a guy who's followed him for more than 10 years, I can tell you than in no uncertain terms he's basically saying he's not for it and will try to fight against it in conference. Obviously the White House has already admitted that they're intentionally not going to draw a red line on the public option so they can keep all interested parties on the "constructive" end of the debate until the Senate and House bills are brought to conference, at which point they plan on drawing the lines. I put constructive in quotes because that's not my view on what Max Baucus and his commitee are doing, but thats for another dairy altogether.
Now, regarding Obama, pay attention to how Obama words his answers when he refers to the Co-op idea with his traditional "if you can show me a plan that will do XYZ as well as the public option, i'll be interested" before saying why the Co-op plan cannot in fact do XYZ, like his example of a national plan vs state run Co-ops, which is essentially the only way these Co-ops can function. If you've followed Obama over the years you'll know that whenever he says "if you can show me how idea A can do X, Y, and Z, then i'm open to it", it means he's not in favor of the counter suggestion but wants to appear that he's listening to all sides and is "pragmatic.", and his next move has always been to be against the alternative he's supposedly going to "look at." For those of you who only began following Obama on the campaign trail, this is not new, a friend of mine who was one of his students says he used that line whenever he was critiquing conservative jurisprudencem in class so as to give the impression his disagreements with a Scalia were not ideological, but pragmatic. He's been this way his entire career,
I know there are the Obama cyhics among the progressive blogeosphere who will probably call this 11-dimensional chess and I'm sympathetic to that call because even though I like the president personally and know that he's ideologically a progressive(believe me, he is) I'm far from an Obama groupie and belive he's waaaaaaay too cautious a politician, and that ultimately he needs to pushed for many of the things we all want. But regarding this interview, and my interpretation of his views towards the Co-op idea, imo it's pretty straightforward once you understand his phrasing of issues and his behavioural tendencies as a politician.