http://www.nytimes.com/...
According to news reports, the Obama administration — which seemed, over the weekend, to be backing away from the "public option" for health insurance — is shocked and surprised at the furious reaction from progressives.
You know how sometimes you're watching a movie that has potential? Maybe it stars your favorite actor, or was directed by one of the greats...but it just keeps losing you? You want it to be at least a good movie, if it cannot be a great one. Maybe the script is lacking, the characters too cardboard, the directing pedestrian.
The fight over the public option involves real policy substance, but it’s also a proxy for broader questions about the president’s priorities and overall approach.
I still have faith, but it is not a blind faith. I want this movie to do boffo box office, two thumbs up, win multiple statues, globes and gold leaves, or whatever they hand out. I want to declare that the president knows what he's doing.
So what's the hold-up...or is it a stick-up?
...it’s possible to have universal coverage without a public option — several European nations do it — and some who want a public option might be willing to forgo it if they had confidence in the overall health care strategy. Unfortunately, the president’s behavior in office has undermined that confidence.
There does not seem to be much middle ground here. Either President Obama has some Master Plan that will save the day by the closing credits, thus quieting his detractors, and re-invigorating his base...or he is not the man I saw in my sudden and blinding insight five (FIVE!) years ago. Insights can be either mistaken, or changed by circumstances...misread, misconstrued, or missed altogether.
On the issue of health care itself, the inspiring figure progressives thought they had elected comes across, far too often, as a dry technocrat who talks of "bending the curve" but has only recently begun to make the moral case for reform. Mr. Obama’s explanations of his plan have gotten clearer, but he still seems unable to settle on a simple, pithy formula; his speeches and op-eds still read as if they were written by a committee.
Meanwhile, on such fraught questions as torture and indefinite detention, the president has dismayed progressives with his reluctance to challenge or change Bush administration policy.
I do not believe in greatness only when it suits my idea of what greatness is. In other words, I can still believe in someone's overall greatness, even if/when they do something to disappoint me, confound me, or I cannot grasp what it is they are trying to achieve. That thing about heroes having feet of clay is a cliche because it's true. I do not want a statue, I want a president.
So progressives are now in revolt. Mr. Obama took their trust for granted, and in the process lost it. And now he needs to win it back.
Win it back. Mr. President, push back. Give substance and action to your brilliance, your gift for oratory, for without that substance, your deep and impassioned voice will be in history's studied gaze, but a shadow, a wisp of smoke. Be strong, get mad, come back with the Cavalry...come charging over the hill, just as the end credits roll.