Trudy Rubin of the Philadelphia Inquirer, author of the "Worldview" column, opined in a piece several days ago (I just saw it reprinted today) that "A US president who failes on his signature issue -- health care -- won't have the strength and support to deal with new challenges by Islamists. He will be seen at home and abroad as seriously weakened. Yet neither party seems much bothered by this threat."
Insofar as I think Health Care is the important domestic issue of our day (after energy and global warming, at least), I nevertheless utterly disagree with this form of argument.
This is precisely the kind of argument that was put forth to squash dissent during the Bush administration -- support our President or you're supporting Osama, etc. etc., no matter what the issue. And it's just as false now as it was during the previous administration.
The article seems to take the approach "a pox on both their houses", Democrats who don't want a weakened reform and Republicans who want to do nothing except hurt Obama.
- There's no moral equivalency here. Having a genuine discussion over policy is NOT the same as a take-no-prisoners, kill it at any costs approach by the GOP.
- Foreign policy has been traditionally a bipartisan endeavor. The undercutting of our President does not happen by merely having a policy debate over a domestic issue.
- Demonstrating our democracy in action cannot, ever, embolden the enemies of democracy. It is the nature of democracy to be disputatious without dividing our national unity. I realize that other things on the periphery -- talk of secession, idiotic attacks on the right of the President to hold office, etc. -- do affect our national unity. Even the most idiotic anti-health-care reform arguments do not, however.
- If the intent of the article is to persuade everybody to get along so Obama can defeat the terrorists, if it's paid attention to at all by lawmakers, it is likely to have the opposite effect -- to embolden the nut jobs on the right who think that anything they can do to hurt our President, including providing aid and succor to terrorists, is the right thing to do and thereby strengthen their determination on health care, a completely unrelated issue.
I don't believe that even a failure to pass legislation would, in Rubin's words, make Obama "fatally wounded...by the politics of health care." On any issue, but particularly not on national security. It's a strawman and one that should be shot down.