I was reading Machiavelli’s The Prince and came across a passage so relevant to ACA implementation that I had to share it with you:
It must be realized that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more uncertain of success, or more dangerous to manage than the establishment of a new order of government; for he who introduces it makes enemies of all those who derived advantage from the old order, and finds but lukewarm defenders among those who stand to gain from the new one.
Such a lukewarm attitude grows partly out of fear of the adversaries, who have the law on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men in general, who actually have no faith in new things until they have been proved by experience.
Hence it happens that whenever those in the enemy camp have a chance to attack, they do so with a partisan fervor, while the others defend themselves rather passively, so that both they and the prince are endangered.
--Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (1513), Ch. 6, Tr: Daniel Donno
W.B. Yeats had a similar insight in his great poem
The Second Coming (1919): “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity.”
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is indeed the establishment of a new order of government. It marks a change in the way this county does business unlike any we have seen in almost 50 years. Yes, it’s more complicated than it should be, but it’s what we have and we’re lucky to have this much. Now’s the time we need to be more than lukewarm in our support.
Enrollment bottlenecks in the early weeks and months were entirely predictable and probably inevitable. We’re listening to a lot of 20/20 hindsight about how the website should have been structured. Should it have been delayed until everything was perfect?
I say no; we can’t let the perfect drive out the good. It was essential that this thing get out of Limbo and into reality. At a certain point, you have to stop preparing and start doing. You get on that bike and ride, even though you’re going to fall down a few times before you get the hang of it. How many software applications have been perfect in Version 1.0? You learn and correct by doing.
Our adversaries are Machiavellian to the core. Maybe our side should take a page from Machiavelli’s book and have our leaders’ backs on this. The other side will try their damnedest to nitpick this thing to death, we shouldn’t be joining them.