The healthcare debate has to be the biggest hair pulling, head shaking, exasperating political event I have ever witnessed. It has led me to believe that while President Obama is a decent person with good intentions, he is incompetent to achieve the goal of real health care reform.
To understand why I say this, it is important to look at the health care reform battle from a military perspective to see not just where things have gone wrong, but how they could have gone right.
- Preparing for Battle:
In taking on health care reform, our President clearly did not properly prepare for battle. The most obvious and glaring defect was the lack of clear objectives. Exactly what hill are we taking? This most obvious of preparations was overlooked and the results were predictable: Everyone has their own idea of which hill needs taking and so when the battle was engaged the troops were scattered and attacking ineffectively along a broad front. Do we support single payer? Public Option? Co op? Secondary reforms? No one really knew so everyone did what people do: pursue what they thought was the best idea.
One of the greatest problems with hazy objectives is that you don't really know who you're going to fight and what their strengths are. It allows the enemy to counterattack piecemeal, which is exactly what happened. Pretty soon, the offensive dies and suddenly you are on the defensive because the enemy has found your weak spot and concentrated their forces on that area. The President chose to keep his options open and thus, created a tremendous leadership vacuum.
By keeping his options open he ended up limiting his opportunities.
- Engaging the Enemy
Because of poor preparation, this engagement was done poorly. Typical of such situations, the battle was engaged blindly. Every new development has had delayed reactions from the White House, as though they were surprised at the counterattack that was sure to come.
This is not how you lead battles. You have to impose your will upon the enemy and keep them off balance, never giving them a chance to regroup. But the main enemy, the health care industry has never been engaged directly in the battle. They've been allowed to fight by proxy through their pawns. They have been on the offensive from the moment the battle started and have never really been threatened.
Allowing your enemy this luxury is fatal to your plans. It allows them the luxury of clear thinking and effective planning, something they must never be given. To win, your enemy must constantly be reacting to new threats. Sadly, this has not happened.
And before I go any further, you have to realize in a battle THAT YOU HAVE ENEMIES!!!!! Our President has never drawn that line. The results have been predictable because he is now on the defensive and his options are quickly dwindling. This is called losing. It's what should have been happening to them, not us.
Had the President had clear objectives, sold the public on those objectives and then marshaled his forces, he could have had many more options because he would have had a much larger and more focused army to fight with.
For instance, he could have staged a mini battle of some sort to feel out his enemies. This is called reconnaissance-in-force. You stage the battle for the purpose of making the enemy tip off their positions and tactics so that you can better plan your main battle. Did that happen here? Nope. He just waded in.
There should have been a barrage of attacks on the health care industry from every possible direction, making them look horrible and villainous and destroying their reputations. There is certainly enough ammo for this lying around. This should never have let up for an instant no matter how much they screamed. He should have exerted enormous pressure on anyone who opposed him. He should have been asking them: "You WANT people to suffer? You WANT them to die of neglect? You WANT this blood on your hands?
I mean, let's face it. This is the good fight. We're saving lives and preventing institutional murder by reforming health care in the U.S. It's serious business and I'm sad to say, it hasn't been treated that way. Instead, we've been treated to every conniving trick Congress can throw at us; including the highly insulting bi-partisanship where it's used as an excuse to cave in to lobbyists.
Mr. President Obama has squandered a lot of political good will here. I hope he learns from his mistakes and does better next time.