The front page of the NYT national section has an article today that reiterates key points about the basic direction of the WH. Its core thesis is as follows:
As much as Mr. Obama presented himself as an outsider during his campaign, a lesson of this battle is that this is a president who would rather work within the system than seek to upend it. He is not the ideologue ready to stage a symbolic fight that could end in defeat; he is a former senator comfortable in dealing with the arcane rules of the Senate and prepared to accept compromise in search of a larger goal. For the most part, Democrats on Capitol Hill have stuck with him.
There are many points that can be raised in response to the article, but I'll focus on 5 aspects of it:
- I'm not sure what "symbolic fight" is being referred to here. Anyone who considers the PO to be "symbolic" is missing the boat, the plane, and the train about the need to fundamentally reform our current health insurance system. Anyone who has read one of nyceve's "murder by spreadsheet" diaries or watched Wendell Potter get interviewed on "Countdown" knows that basic fact. While the PO became the legislative means of choice to pursue fundamental reform, it did so b/c other options (e.g. single payer) were never considered. Those of us who were willing to accept a PO w/ an opt-out as a first step didn't suffer a symbolic defeat when this compromise died in the Senate. We suffered a real defeat on a fundamental philosophical issue.
- 220 House members voted for a HCR bill w/ a PO and w/o an excise tax. All indications are that a Senate majority would've done so, too, had it not been for a threatened filibuster by 2 members of the Dem caucus. A Senate majority, a House majority, and, BTW, the will of a sizeable public majority were all thwarted by 2 senators. One of those senators openly supported the opposing party's POTUS nominee as he went down to a decisive defeat in '08.
- The obvious undercurrent of the article is that the Dean approach has been eschewed and the Rahmbo approach is being followed by this WH. The Obama campaign was, clearly, a Rohrschach Test that was, in hindsight, intended to allow its supporters to see what they wanted to see. I don't recall, however, the slogan "Compromises We Can Tolerate" being utilized by that campaign. I also don't recall crowds chanting: "We Want Continuity." I sure as hell don't recall having a "Continuity" sign on my front lawn last fall.
- Rahmbo makes the following observation about Afghanistan:
Mr. Obama’s call to send more troops to Afghanistan is what he always talked about in the context of outlining his opposition to the war in Iraq. "It’s not like he woke up one morning and said, ‘Let’s go fight a war in Afghanistan,’ " Mr. Emanuel said. "He talked about it in the campaign."
While the man has a point, I don't recall Obama pledging to have about as many troops in Afghanistan as there were in Iraq pre-"surge." There's also considerable ambiguity as to how long those troop levels will be maintained. Given how ambiguity has worked in the past, it's reasonable to be skeptical about what troop reductions, if any, will take place 2 years from now.
- There's also some spin about the campaign positions that were taken on HCR:
And Mr. Obama never exhibited the left’s passion for establishing a public insurance option as part of an overhaul of health care. He rarely talked about it during scores of debates, speeches and interviews during the campaign; instead he focused on expanding coverage, lowering costs and ending health insurance abuses.
One certainly can argue that Obama didn't emphasize the PO in his campaign. He did, however, strongly oppose excise taxes. He also opposed individual mandates, he opposed backroom deals, and he supported drug price controls. The Senate bill has an excise tax and individual mandates, and it has a backroom deal that generously benefitted PhRMA. One of the main "cost control" mechanisms in the Senate bill is to use the excise tax as a means of encouraging reduced use of health care services. There are also questions about how much the bill would actually stop recission. While pre-existing conditions can no longer be a bar to coverage, they (and age) can be used as factors to significantly increase premiums.