Let me just get this out there: I voted for Barack Obama because he's smart. I think he's the smartest person I've had the opportunity to vote for who was running for President. And I think, not counting Nixon, he's the smartest President so far in my lifetime. So how can someone so smart be so unforgivably stupid when it comes to his handling of the health care reform process going on in Congress?
While the President has no legislative authority, he does have the bully pulpit -- in the age of TV AND the Intertubes, a very bully of a bully pulpit indeed -- and a sizable margin of electoral victory and large party majorities (of which he is the de facto leader) in both chambers of Congress. His margin of victory of the popular vote and legislative majorities translate to a popular mandate for his campaign issues - of which health care reform - which included a robust public option - was one of the most prominent.
How could he have let health care reform go so abominably wrong?
So, what if, and I'm asking for your willing suspension of disbelief here (it is a work of speculative fiction, after all), what if President Obama really did take the lessons of the Clinton health care reform debacle to heart? And rather than learning those lessons too well and, as a result becoming an effete and ineffective (alright, alright, wholly absent) advocate for his own campaign pseudopromises, he is actually laying out the most cunning trap of all for the health insurance industry and big pharma: giving them as much rope as they wish to take so he can hang them with it by publicly vetoing the bill they bought and paid for?
It's improbable, it's unlikely, and my even considering the possibility is very probably the result of watching one too many tv shows where the plot involved a similar Batman Gambit, but, like I said, I didn't vote for stupid, and most people that I know that voted for the man did so because they were aching for smart after eight years of indefensible and willful stupid. And you can't be stupid if you're going to pull off what I'm wildly extemporizing about.
President Obama set the wheels of health care reform in motion, and then essentially abandoned all involvement. And then, predictably, the vested interests mobilized their lobbyists, made deals, and gave their legislative pawns their marching orders. And even then, President Obama sat back and never actually committed himself to a position of what he wanted to see in the bill which would come out of the Congress his party, of which he is the leader, controlled. And voila: the House and Senate proposals. Now seeing as how the House has been done with its business on HCR for months now, the real public spectacle has been unfolding in the Senate.
And what a spectacle the Senate has given us. Now that the procedural hurdles have finally been passed, all those acting in bad faith have been exposed, and their selling price made public. Landrieu: $300 million for her state. Nelson: $100 million for his state. Lieberman: Billions, if not trillions, of taxpayer and private dollars for his corporate masters in the decades this bill may survive as law if it becomes law (and "hey, if it pisses off those dirty f*cking hippies, BONUS!"). Snowe: didn't need a deal, she's just a ball-busting, power-tripping twat who wants the spotlight every now and then.
If this is a ploy on Obama's part, it's not all that brilliant, but then again, it is: he only need to let everyone inclined to act in bad faith do so. And they have, quite publicly. Now all he has to do, and this is the clever bit, is double-cross the people that double-crossed him (well, screwed over the HCR process for their own benefit, but you know what I mean (I hope)), by vetoing the bill, and then taking to the airwaves to publicly expose and shame everyone that screwed with the process to benefit themselves or some monied-interest. He can lambaste shady members of Congress and highlight their graft, corruption, and treachery. He could even shame Big Pharma, by exposing the details of the still-secret deal the Obama White House cut with them.
The symbolic downside is he loses a shitty bill that half his base would not forgive him for passing.
The practical downside is that he pisses off members of Congress who took a lot of abuse defending a bill he then kills. But then, he's more popular than Congress, or even Congressional Democrats, so they need him more than he needs them, electorate-wise.
The symbolic upside is that his action galvanizes the people who were drifting away from him, validates his storm troopers' attack dogs' venomous Obots' Grand Inquisitors Of Orthodoxy and Loyalty uhm, "more enthusiastic supporters'" belief in him, and probably wins back most of the demoralized (self-avowed) liberals (like me) who have so far written him off as just another pandering ego-tripping Clintonian triangulator corporate-shill narcissist more interested in "being President" than actually doing anything with the office to further his party's agenda and values, by like, you know, fulfilling his campaign promises. Not that he, technically speaking, actually made any (Go ahead and check me on that -- he really didn't make any promises so far as I remember. I cannot recall any occasion on which he actually used the verb 'promise' when referring to what he would do as President. If you disagree with my assertion, cite and show where the verb 'promise' or its cognitive - not trivial - synonyms are used and one Barack H. Obama is the subject).
The practical upside is that all those manipulating the process and acting in bad faith for the benefit of themselves or third-party vested interests will have expended a considerable amount of time and money that they can't get back, and not only will they be publicly exposed, but so too will be their tactics.
The practical outcome of vetoing a bad HCR bill is that the opponents of reform will be outed and exposed, and therefore vulnerable to public pressure. The public will expect that on a second attempt, the Republicans will present a real alternative, since they would have had an entire year to come up with one. Which, since they haven't, might entice some of the few remaining moderate Republicans in Congress to entertain the notion of supporting HCR if they think Obama is willing to throw a heavy-handed punch or two in its defense and the defense of those acting in good faith. And since Obama will have preserved essentially all of his political capital (even though it does have a half-life), he can expend it fighting for the HCR bill he wants, a bipartisan one where everyone gives up something but gets something in return: a public option but an individual mandate, Medicare and Medicaid negotiating for lower drug and medical device prices, but liability and award limits for drug and medical device manufacturers, etc. Every interested party giving in on something they can live with giving up in exchange for getting something they've long wanted.
But the greatest risk to vetoing a HCR bill, no matter how crappy and corporatist it is - is public exhaustion: exhaustion with the process, exhaustion with news coverage, exhaustion with arguments with friends and loved ones; exhaustion with a process we've all come to hate and having to endure it one more time.
Or he could not veto the bill and pass the Senate version is as(which it will have to be or Senator Nelson of Nebraska will kill it). (Which I have to say, is some compromise "My way or the highway.")
But the point could be made that until all interested parties start dealing honestly and transparently in the process, exhaustion is all the American public is going to get because the problems with how we pay for health care in this country aren't really going to be fixed. We'll revisit this issue in ten to twenty years when Medicare and Medicaid are on the imminent verge of bankruptcy and we will have all these same arguments all over again. Thankfully, though, by that point, everyone alive for today's health care reform screaming match will still be alive then, thanks to medical science which will have probably eliminated death itself - though not disease. The only problem being is that the process of death elimination will be so expensive, and mandatory, that we will all be working for the rest of eternity just to pay back the insurance companies we will be required by federal law to be the customers of.
But then again, this is probably all just so much wishful thinking on the part of someone who has given up on Obama and the Democrats, but really wants to be wrong about, but is afraid that he isn't. But then again, more improbable things have happened, like Obama's presidency itself. But maybe we've had our run of improbable good luck. After all, "don't underestimate our ability to screw it up." indeed.
Quick endnote: anyone thinking up a comment which uses the phrase "multidimensional chess" or its variants, please, no one is impressed with that anymore. Spare yourself the ridicule. Think up something new. A good one would be a riff on the Olympia Snowe snark, like "You mean, like you? But with importance, a job, and an audience?" Something like that.