I listened carefully this morning to David Axelrod's discussion on ABC of the "lessons" that the Obama Administration has learned from Massachusetts. One lesson he said they'd learned is that "people don't want us to walk away from health care." Which is surprising, because I had been under the impression that one of the main things we learned from the debacle was that people hate our current approach to health care reform. This is not so, says Axelrod. Au contraire, "the bill that the House and Senate passed were patterned in many ways on the Massachusetts health care plan," and 68% of the people who voted said they favored the Massachusetts plan. When I heard that, I thought: this guy Axelrod is going beyond spin. He's downright dishonest, if only with himself.
One of the great disasters of the current health care reform is that it will leave several of the most loyal Democratic electorates in the nation--Massachusetts being only one--WORSE OFF THAN BEFORE. Massachusetts is worse off because its current plan covers 97% of its residents, and the new plan would not do nearly as well and would cost even more. Governor Howard Dean has eloquently argued that the current "reform" will leave the people in his own state of Vermont WORSE OFF than they are now with the nearly universal coverage that was passed during Dean's tenure. Out here in San Francisco where I live, we have what is called "Healthy San Francisco" which ensures that even the poorest of the poor can obtain any needed health care services. This program would simply disappear under the new reform.
David Axelrod says that people are disparaging the bill only because they don't know what's in it. He says:
The underlying elements [of the bill] are popular and important, and people will never know what's in that bill until we pass it, the president signs it, and they have a whole range of new protections that they never had before.
In other words, stop carping, trust us, you'll love it.
Well, Mr. Axelrod, what about the polls that show that public disapproval of Obama's policies are rising steeply? Ah, said Axelrod:
When the president walked in the door he was handed the worst economy since the Great Depression.
Axelrod shared some of the sage advice he had given Obama when he first came into office. He said he told the new president that his numbers were not going to look nearly as good in a year due to the economic catastrophe he was inheriting. Again the honesty question.
It's true that there are some very striking comparisons between Obama and FDR. We read that
Mr. Roosevelt swept into office as an enormously popular figure whom voters had entrusted to rescue them from a financial catastrophe that some worried could threaten America's democracy. By the time Mr. Roosevelt took office in March, 1933, many of the nation's banks were on the verge of collapse or shut down.
But what Mr. Axelrod seems unfamiliar with is the subsequent trajectory of FDR's popularity as he proposed and then enacted his New Deal. His popularity soared and within a year was at 80%. How come FDR was adored and Obama is increasingly reviled? Let me suggest a few points for Mr. Axelrod to ponder before he gives the president his next round of advice.
The first point is tactical. We read:
Mr. Roosevelt, like Ronald Reagan a half-century later, figured out how to go over the heads of Congress and appeal directly to the public.
President Obama's enormous popularity gave him a chance to do this as well, but he unfortunately surrounded himself with hacks like Axelrod and Emmanuel and tringulated instead toward some mythical centerground.
FDR in his first inaugural address proclaimed:
Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men...The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization.
Axelrod offered this pale substitute this morning: "This president is never going to stop pushing back against special interests."
Upon election FDR showed that he meant business about the money changers in the temple:
FDR's immediate task upon his inauguration was to stabilize the nation's banking system. On March 6, Roosevelt declared a national 'bank holiday' to end a run by depositors seeking to withdraw their money from faltering banks. FDR also called Congress into emergency session where the legislature enacted, nearly sight unseen, the President's banking proposal. Under this plan, the federal government would inspect all banks, re-open those that were sufficiently solvent, re-organize those that could be saved adn close those that were beyond repair.
Obama's response was different. His first act, effectively, was to approve a direct $787 billion taxpayer bailout of the banks. Axelrod said Obama had to do it to avoid another Great Depression. But what is really depressing is to look at the difference between what happened to the economy after FDR's emergency bank legislation and what happened to the economy after Obama's huge bailout. In 1934 the American economy almost immediately began a long-term recovery from the depression. In 2009 after the bailout the American economy continued to sputter along.
We love Obama, if only he could let out his inner FDR. We thought he was going to be a champion of the middle class and the oppressed, but it appears instead he has become captive to hack political advisers who have forgotten the lessons of history and the ways that a president can use tremendous popularity to gain even more popularity as a champion of the people.