There is almost nothing a true liberal values more than empirical evidence. It soothes the cerebral maelstrom, lends calmness to uncertainty, provides stability in the face of cognitive dissonance. It is a sizeable rock in a moat of lasting ambiguity. It is a mooring from which a solid sense-of-self based on humanism and science can take root with pride and thrive in a sea of faith-based ignorance. It is truly life sustaining, for me especially, because I have never been blessed with faith. I am among the 1 in 4 (so some studies indicate) not so fortunate to have such a sanctuary in which to mentally retreat when uncomfortable truths may confront me.
Recent studies have shown that there actually may be a dominant gene in the human species—a "God Gene"—which explains the prevalence of faith. And it is a time like this that I curse my recessive faith gene and particularly miss having what so many others have.
Faith...I want to believe Barack Obama. I want to trust our president. I voted for him. I gave him money. I wept for 8 consecutive days at some point during the day after he was elected, and have wept many times since. I am glad and filled with pride that he is the president of the United States...or...was.
To explain my unfortunate metamorphosis in these last 6 months from giddy idealist to empirical semi-cynic actually needs no explaining, especially to other people like me. They’ve watched, as I have watched, a continuation of some policies I find abhorrent—from a strengthening of the unitary executive and continuing use of the State Secrets Act, to the coddling of big banks. These two things are VERY important to me (and to many others I suspect).
I thought to myself before Obama was elected, if he does not give back some of the powers of the executive that Bush/Cheney snatched from the legislative branch, they would likely never be given back, and we would teeter towards totalitarianism under every future republican president.
He has not given the powers back.
I also thought that if we do not take this opportunity to break up banks that are too big to fail, they will be harder to break up in the future. This opening, too, may have passed.
There are other things, many things, too many to mention actually, that disturb me about Obama’s fledgling presidency, and they all point unmistakably to one thing in my mind—that Barack Obama may not be man I thought he was.
To be fair, a lot of that may be my fault. I got swept up in an idealistic euphoria during last year’s election season. Obama was never a liberal ideologue--never claimed to be--and it is not his fault that I let Kennedy memories light my mind with progressive possibilities with the coming of a new democratic president. It happened with Bill Clinton as well. And like Clinton’s presidency, Obama’s has been a bit of a roller coaster ride for me.
And to be fair, we can’t ignore the incredibly strong conservative institutional pressures on a new black democratic president and his real need to calm the fears of the market and the media. If he did some things early on that seemed a little to centrist for my taste, well, I thought, that’s the price that Obama and we progressives must pay.
For awhile.
But as I have watched his presidency progress, the centrist tendencies have not subsided. I kept thinking—I just know he is going to turn into a new FDR—any time now—if not this month next month...and then the next month comes. And we get more executive bonuses, extensions of war, more government secrecy, and an all out defense and whitewash of Bush administration crimes...
Just one more month I thought...
And you know what? Even with all those disappointments, I have still been willing to give Obama the benefit of a doubt on health care. On the public option to be exact. Perhaps because I desire it so much. I still want to believe in him. I want to have faith in him.
The President says he is for the public option in almost every venue in which he appears. He surely must be for the public option...right? I mean, to contemplate anything else is almost unthinkable. To take the leap from believing a good man to not believing him as a default setting...a charismatic president, one I and millions of others have put all their trust in, this early in a new democratic presidency...well, I just can’t do it.
Just one more month...
And it is that context that we find ourselves embroiled in a great healthcare debate and I find myself thinking about that default setting of trust for the President. And it is in that debate that President Obama has assured the masses—but particularly his supporters on the left—that he favors a public option. And I want to believe our president. I want to have faith that he is telling the truth. As always, I want to have faith.
But I’m afraid at long last my recessive gene is failing me. Again.
Some of it is my fault, and some of it Obama’s, but I have undergone a metamorphosis. What was once blind acceptance has turned to trust but verify. And it is during the verification stage last week that I found what appeared to me to be a smoking gun article at Firedoglake.
http://campaignsilo.firedoglake.com/...
When I read this article and clicked on links to related articles, it struck me as nothing less than an "Aha!" moment. What was once foggy became clear. To my mind, there is absolutely no way a logical and reasonable person with political intuition can read that material and come to any conclusion other than the one I and Jane Hamsher and Glenn Greenwald have and many others have come to:
Obama has already sold out the public option, and did so months ago.
Now I realize this is very difficult to hear, and it doesn’t mean we won’t get a public option in the upcoming weeks through progressive pressure and a solid block of House liberals standing tall for our principles. But if we get that public option, it will not be because of Obama, but in spite of him.
What does the Hamsher article say in a nutshell? It says Obama met with Big Healthcare in May, and that these corporate entities agreed to pony up nearly $300 billion dollars as well as do these 3 things:
The goal of keeping stakeholders at the table was threefold:
- Keep them from advertising against the White House plan
- Keep them from torpedoing vulnerable Democrats in 2010 so there isn't a repeat of 1994
- Keep their money out of GOP coffers
You can see the fingerprints in the deals that they made: the $150 million PhRMA was spending on ads for health care reform, the $2.5 million they spent helping vulnerable freshmen, and the total fury that Boehner has unleashed on PhRMA and other stakeholders for making deals with the White House.
So what the White House was able to do was get a sh*tload of money to make a downpayment on the health care plan, and they were able to get these corporate behemoths to advertise in favor of Obama’s plan (or at least hold their fire) and also pledge to give money to vulnerable blue dogs and withhold money from republicans in the next election cycle.
You will notice that Obama didn’t mention much of that last part during the photo-op after the meeting.
Oh, and there’s another thing he didn’t mention. And I’m just going to ask you guys what it is. This site is full of incredibly intelligent and politically savvy people—just what did Barack Obama have to promise Big Healthcare for all the goodies previously mentioned? Are there any of you out there that believe Big Healthcare gave all that up because they simply want to be unselfish stewards of the public good? Do I really have to say it why they gave that money up?
I don’t think I do.
Folks, I hate to say these things, and I really mean that. When someone feels like you're trying to take their faith away, it’s like giving them a hard punch to the gut. They’re damn sure not going to like it. And a lot of people on this site have an unwavering faith in the president to fight for progressive principles and I respect that. But I'm afraid there is scant evidence of it.
No, I feel we must (at least I must) proceed where the evidence leads. And here is what the evidence leads me to believe has happened over the last few months:
In May, Barack Obama received a load of money for his healthcare plan and promises from Big Healthcare to help fund the blue dogs in the next election if he would agree to do just one little thing—jettison the public option.
Obama tasked Max Baucus to write the no-public-option bill he negotiated with Big Healthcare and Kent Conrad was tasked in finding a middle ground between a public option and no public option that he could sell to centrists (which turned out to be co-ops).
A bait and switch, good cop/bad cop strategy was designed for the sales pitch in which Obama would stay in good stead with his base by saying all summer that he favored a public option (knowing full well he had already bargained it away), while claiming separation from the Baucas negotiations and allowing Baucas to take the heat from progressives for favoring co-ops instead of the public option.
(And of course, Obama does "favor" a public option so he is not being technically untruthful; he favors the public option in much the same way I favor a manned mission to Mars—both are desirable but neither is planned)
The co-op plan was designed to bring on board 3 republican senators, which would allow Obama to claim a bipartisan bill—fulfilling a campaign promise of bipartisanship—while "unfortunately" falling short in achieving a public option.
A strategy of letting the liberals down slowly (per Politico) ensued, led by Bill "half a loaf" Clinton and Begala and Sebilius and even Obama. A furious pushback from liberals followed.
And that’s where we are now. No ju jitsu politics. No 11-dimensional chess. No trying to gin up the base in favor of the public option as a brilliant political feint or amazing slight of hand by the president.
Just a plain old-fashioned corporate sellout of epic porportions.
That, unfortunately, is where this all leads. The evidence is somewhat circumstantial in that we weren’t a fly on the wall in that infamous meeting room when all this backroom dealing took place, but 30 years of political intuition tells me pretty much what happened. Just follow the money and trust your gut. No one is going to tell you the public option was bargained away but you can see it. Smell it. Taste it. And when you connect the circumstantial dots, there is a conviction.
Yes, the public option was bargained away early-on. And our president has been withholding that truth from liberals all summer.
So what I am hoping right now, and will continue to hope until hope runs out, is that President Obama completely cleared his mind this last week and re-evaluated his presidency. That he took note of such intense progressive passion for the public option and reflected upon the passing of the liberal Lion of the Senate, a friend, mentor, and beacon of light for the all the huddled masses. And I hope that all these things reminded our president of why he wanted to be president in the first place. That is what I hope.
In a few weeks we will find out if there is still room for faith and dreams and progressive possibility in this presidency, or if I and millions of others are crowded out by corporate interests, doomed to live the life of empirical cynic, no longer able to trust and needing to verify, always verify.
President Obama, please help me to have faith.
For the first time.