Maybe the Last Few Months of Political Nonsense Have Been Part of Obama's Master Plan
I remember reading an interview with Kevin Smith back in 1997 in which the trench-coat-wearing writer/director/Miramax poster boy admitted that his third film, Chasing Amy, which was getting a lot of positive critical attention at the time, was actually intended to be his second. Figuring there was bound to be backlash against him after the enormous success of his first, low-budget feature, Clerks, Smith decided that, rather than let a film he felt was actually worth something get unfairly torn apart by jealousy and bad press, better to send out a sacrificial lamb to take the hit -- in this case, a movie he didn't care too much about and that no one would ever mistake for a good film that had gotten a bad rap.
And hence Mallrats.
Well, with apologies to anyone who takes politics and high-minded social criticism seriously, I have come to the conclusion that President Obama is taking a similar tack with the public health care option.
I figure it this way: Obama had to know that whatever goodwill he enjoyed during his first few months in office would eventually dry up. That the relative ease he'd experienced in passing the financial bail-out bill in February was a honeymoon victory resulting from unsustainably high poll numbers and a desperate economic environment in which any strong action would be looked on positively by an American public driven to disbelief by Bush's detachment.
Obama's inner-circle also knew that when it came time for the president to call his second big play, the Republicans would waiting in the tall grass for him.
So rather than put health care reform on the table straight and risk getting into an ugly dog-fight over issues he thought were vital (like lower premiums and guaranteed coverage), Obama put the public option out into the world as a sacrifice, a big piece of Democratic red-meat with a slight tang of socialism that he knew would drive the Right crazy.
Then, just when things seemed to be getting irretrievably dark (like, say, early September, after a full month of town hall nonsense), Obama put the word out that he was willing to reach across the aisle, to compromise for the sake of health care reform. By doing this, he suddenly appeared munificent and bi-partisan in an environment of extreme ideological toxicity. Now any Republicans who continued screaming and shouting about the danger the president's health care plan posed to America's social fabric would come off looking petty: They would be representatives of the "party of no," disagreeing just to be disagreeable in a time when insurance premiums kept rising, more and more Americans were losing their coverage and the economy was sinking deeper into the tank.
My friend Eliot Tretter, doctor of geography and apparent closet boxing fan, calls this approach the "rope-a-dope": Obama lays back during the summer and lets the Right Wing have their effigy-burning, name-calling, Hitler-referencing fun and then, just when it looks like the Democrats are getting their heads handed to them, he swoops in with a compromise only a mindless ideologue could truly hate. Suddenly health-care reform looks alive again, naysaying Republicans no longer look like the principled opposition party but rather a bunch of intransigent cranks, and the president comes off looking like a bipartisan rationalist.
So now what, Obama? Now that you've given a couple of speeches and gone on all the Sunday news programs and Late Night With David Letterman and told the American people what your plan is really all about?
Now you have to get some version of health care reform passed (not a perfect bill, of course, but one that speaks to the issues you find most pressing), finding common ground among Democrats both left and centrist while leaving Republicans, both blindly contrarian and powerless, out in the wilderness.
Then you sit back and let people get used to the good that can come from government involvement in the health care industry -- the reduced premiums, the fixed prices, the guaranteed coverage -- never underestimating the American public's capacity to change its ideological tune when it experiences firsthand the benefits of a policy they were once skeptical about.
Remember, when social security was being debated in the 1930s, opponents swore up and down that anyone supporting it was a socialist. Same with Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s. And now look: Social Security has become the great untouchable in American politics (just ask George Bush and the Republicans about the virtues of privatization); meanwhile Medicare -- that shining example of government-run "socialized" medicine -- is so sacred that even right-wing town hall crazies carry signs demanding the government stay out of it (and without a hint of irony, too).
(Medicaid, of course, is slightly less sacred to Americans because it benefits only the poor, and if there's one thing the Right is good at, it's screaming about the need for a national Christian morality while totally missing the point of Christianity.)
If this all happens, then you've built up enough political capital and public goodwill that maybe the voters will trust you and your party enough to keep you in power come 2010 and 2012. And then -- after you've been re-elected and after the American people have grown accustomed to the idea of government involvement in health care and seen what it can do for them -- then you spring the public option on them. Because by that point you will have softened them up to the idea.
It's a perfect demonstration of the old adage that politics is the art of the possible, achieved in increments.
If this is all true, if Obama really is "rope-a-doping," and if he manages to pull it off, then he very well may be a political genius, a thinking-man's leader so patient he's willing to bide his time (through one of the darker, more intellectually demeaning months in American history, no less) and suffer all kinds of indignities in order to get what he feels is best for the country. But if it's not true, then Obama is stuck in neutral. A man both without a cause and without a plan. A moral and political lightweight.
And if that's the case, then Eliot Tretter Ph.D. and I are the only political geniuses around. Us and the Republicans. And God help this country if that proves to be true.
Follow Josh Rosenblatt on Twitter: www.twitter.com/unfittimes
Robert Creamer: Every Democratic Senator Must Vote to Allow an Up or Down Vote on Health Care
If a Democratic Senator votes to prevent his party from having an up or down vote on its top domestic priority, he is endangering the political lives of his swing district colleagues. That would be unforgivable.
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The big House health care vote is tomorrow. So we've launched a new online calling tool to reach out to MoveOn members in key districts and connect them to Capitol Hill. Can you make calls?
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Dear MoveOn member,
After months of build-up, tomorrow is THE big House vote on landmark health care reform. But according to news reports, Democrats don't yet have the votes to win!
This is crunch time. We have to win this vote. Right now, it's all coming down to a key group of moderate Democrats who are on the fence—and we hear they're getting inundated with calls from health care opponents.
They need to hear from progressives now—so we're asking MoveOn members from all around the country to help.
How? We have a great new online tool that lets you call other MoveOn members in these key House districts and connect them directly to their representative's office on Capitol Hill.
Can you drop whatever you're doing and call a few fellow MoveOn members in these crucial districts right now?
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I hope the President has a strong strategy going ahead. In the meantime, look at all the misery in America--more and more unemployed and uninsured people, going broke. I am single and I am in a group plan--so fortunate-though, my income is fairly small--- I cringe at the prospect of any ill health ahead, just with deductibles and copays. The uninsured--wow!!! Regardless, time is of the essence.
God I hope your right. Ive heard Obama is weak and I certainly wouldn't or really just couldn't argue with anyone saying he may have lost the courage of his convictions . I mean if you look around at what he has done - what has he done? Certainly nothing great and he definitely has done nothing anyone rational would tag as radical or even liberal. Bank bailouts and stimulus packages are nothing even close to liberal. We are still in Iraq and we have increased troops in Afghanistan - any dem would say those are centrist moves at best. Gitmo has not been bulldozed, taxes have not been radically changed and health reform is looking less and less like reform daily.
But while Obama may look and even be called weak, I have never heard anyone saying Obama is dumb - no leftist is dumb enough to believe it and no rightist could think it would ever help the cause right now to say it. More importantly, the tide could turn in an instant with the wave of a magic wand. So while I remain skeptical that this is some grand master plan, I do think Obama is one of the few people in this country that could be playing national chess instead of checkers with all of us. And I do think Obama has the best of intentions. My major concern is the same thing that is clearly circulating in the back of your mind, what if the show of weakness is actually just that... Lets hope for the country's sake that we actually elected the president we all thought we did on inauguration day.
I think you have it right. Obama knows the "public option" is an inevitability. Why risk killing the reform to get it quicker when it will come naturally when the insurance industry starts to die financially. The key to beginning of the end of the insurance industry is getting the key concessions Obama wants, universality, no pre-existing conditions, etc. The insurance CEOs see big profits in the immediate future. But they don't look down the long haul. CEOs are not paid to do that, just think short term. Like the drug COs with the drug benefit. Initially it looks good only soon the government will flex its muscle and use long buried provisions in that law that give it the right to negotiate if pricing cannot be controlled by the industry. Ditto for the insurance companies plans to keep cranking premiums forever at 8-10% per year. Not likely. Just as there are right wing loonies at tea parties demanding the government stay out of Medicare so too will the loons be carrying signs demanding caps on premiums in the future (Don't tread on my meds!). Then there will be large insurance COs operating across state lines (after laws are relaxed of course) that will be servicing millions of medical plans and have inadequate reserves and are too big to fail and then who steps in to save them, the Feds! Instant single payer, instant public option. Its the next big bubble. So relax and let Obama handle things.
What will be the impact on health care with the repeal of the McCarran-Ferguson Act, H.R. 3596? I read that it's been incorporated into the House bill, H.R. 3962, “the Affordable Health Care for America Act.” Will this make the bill stronger? Some folks are very unhappy about this new developmen
"Legislation to repeal the antitrust exemption for health and medical malpractice insurers has been modified to include scrutiny of those insurers practices," an insurance trade group said. Moreover, the new language contained in a broad health care reform measure would give express enforcement authority to the Federal Trade Commission with respect to "'unfair methods of competition,'" by insurers according to officials of the American Insurance Association. The provision allows federal anti-trust laws to broadly apply to the “business of health insurance or the business of medical malpractice insurance” without the benefit of the McCarran-Ferguson anti-trust exemption.
The “very narrow” set of safe harbors contained in the new language “appear to offer little protection” to underwriters of these two lines of insurance. The safe harbors would provide an exemption for “collecting, compiling, classifying, or disseminating historical loss data; determining a loss development factor applicable to historical loss data; or performing actuarial services if doing so does not involve a restraint of trade.”
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I tend to agree with this assessment. For all the noise the GOP is making, their numbers are in the tank. The strategy is already working, the Right is screaming louder and louder, and their base is getting smaller and smaller. They have effectively weeded out all the sane people form their party.
Even if Obama's approval ratings drop to 50 percent, I don't believe it will go farther than that, for the next year, he can still bring them up with some successes. The GOP, on the other hand, is going to have to do a lot more than just say no to get their numbers back up.
Obama is a smart man, I still have great admiration for him. But he, however, is just a man and is prone to make some mistakes along the way
Yes, there does appear to be a method to Obama's madness. He must have read some book about other ways of skinning cats, because he invariably comes out the other side with the victory of sorts.
The big dust-up over that religious leader (name?) that was to offer the prayer at the inauguration ended up exposing that man to endless examination and we've heard very little from him since. A win.
When Obama let congress go forth in bringing about health care reform, we saw a-l-l-l-l the idiocy from our "electeds"
Max Baucus, fair haired fave of Montana now will be lucky to be re-elected. Who wants someone so indebted to the corporate masters that they can't say "public option" without puking? He signed his own death warrant with his BS, lying to our faces with his car-salesman sh*t eating grin. What a disgrace!
All of the insincere, corporate-
They have insulted our intelligence while living large on corruption
Not bloody likely.
Thanks Obama for letting them run with the ball, they blew it big time. Now everyone knows.
Watching him is indeed fascinating. Thinking about what he is thinking, trying to imagine (impossible!) how he works out his moves.
He could appear mcgillificent.
There is a need to better separate Kevin Smith from Michael Moore.
Seems convincing to me. As an observer who takes his politics and high-minded cultural criticism seriously, I'm glad that you've finally provided corroborating evidence (if only circumstantial) of earlier reports that Mallrats is one of the President's favorite movies. It is impossible to determine whether he is a socialist unless we know were he stands on mall-based teen comedies.
The "multi-dimensional" chess argument is as lame as the "it's only been eight months" argument.
President Obama has proven he's just another DLC-to-the-bone Democrat who used the scam of "new politics" and bipartisanship as a cover not to have to even try and keep his campaign promises.
He completely betrayed the gay community and the promises he made to them by endorsing the unneccessary legal brief to uphold DOMA, using the vilest arguments about bestiality, incest and pedophiia -- something which we would have seen from a McCain Justice Department or a Bush Justice Department.
He never once, not once, drew a line in the sand for a robust public option. He hasn't stood up and fought the conservative movement or the corporate lobbyists on ANYTHING.
Look at his appointments. Genuine progressives were shunned for the same old corporate shills who endorse the status quo like Geitner and Summers and Emmanuel. His first pick for Health & Human Service Secretary was Tom Daschle, someone who didn't support any public option.
The Obmaniacs have endless excuses for the fecklessness of the President.
Eight months is more than enough time to judge his character in office. His words and his speeches, no matter how well delivered are meaningless. You have to look at a politicians actual actions to learn who they really are and what they really believe.
Conservatives who scream about Obama's march to "socialism" don't know how good they have it.
We've been had. Despite the campaign for 'hope' it's just another Good Cop - Bad Cop routine choreographed by the machine.
Make sure you know about the DLC.
Then vote in the Democratic Primaries for the Real people's democrats like Kucinich and the Progressive caucus. take moveon's recommendations and reject any candidate pushed by Rahm.
Obama proved to be a political genius during his campaign, knowing when to respond and when to ignore. When to bang out the same message and when to change. Never underestimate this man. He is a master of timing.
well we can only hope he does truly have a plan -- because even many of his staunchest advocates are beginning to deflate. I just hope he doesn't overestimate his own intelligence. He is a patient man and most of us don't have that virtue.
He did run this strategy in his campaign when he let every one say every nasty thing in the world about him and he never defended himself. After all that craziness had worn itself out, then all of a sudden there he was on television offering us vision and hope. He garnered a lot of trust which we are slowing running out of. Most of the support now is because the opposition is 100,000 times worse.
Assuming that your theory is correct and Obama has a strategy that we mere mortals can't see yet (and I tend to agree), it seems like a lot of effort just to get a public OPTION. If he's working a 2-term masterplan I'd think the logical reason would be to go for the throat in 2012 and get true single payer.
I know he's said "I don't think this (Canadian-style) system would work in the US". Of course, if this was his plan all along, a simple "I meant it wouldn't work until we expose the insurance companies as incapable of providing the service that Americans need", but I don't see Obama being that manipulative with his words. He campaigned for a public option, although when he explained it I distinctly remember getting the impression he meant a true OPTION... as in "for all Americans". The literal meaning of "if you like your insurance, keep it. But if you don't, or don't have any at all, there will be a public option for you". So it wouldn't be limited to people who aren't Medicare-eligable up to 200% of federal poverty levels, or whatever pathetic limits they put on it. The public option would truly be an option for everyone.
And then, when Howard Dean gets elected in 2016, he'd be able to easily push it into a single payer, since the insurance company rolls would have dropped below sustainable levels by then.
Hey, a progressive can dream!
Yes, perhaps it is.
In just the same way that the TARP II and Fed support of the bankers and their compensation guarantee was part of Obama's grander plan to improve control of banker's bad behavior.
Of course, nothing much substantive is happening there, either.
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