Crazy Pragmatism

In 2003, Barack Obama told attendees at an AFL-CIO conference, "I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer, universal health care system." Yet in his weekly You Tube address on July 19, now-President Obama said, "I don't believe that government can or should run health care." And then, at his AARP town-hall appearance on Tuesday, he assured his audience that no "bureaucratic law in Washington" would interfere in their private health care decisions, and that "nobody is talking about...a Canadian-style plan." This is quintessential modern Democratic pragmatism: adopting the language of the opposition, preempting criticism by ceding your position, forfeiting a battle in order to win the larger war. But these are tactics that, because they give implicit credence to irrational nonsense, turn every fight into a war that can never be won.

The insidious irony of the pragmatism favored by Obama and Rahm Emmanuel is that it legitimizes a delusional worldview and makes practical goals more difficult to achieve. This supposedly tough-minded style of politics is all about acquiescence, to a conservative culture that has been "non-reality-based" (as a Bush administration official famously described it to Ron Suskind) for thirty years. And when you buy a penny's worth of delusion you're in for a pound, so the liberals who have been propping up dangerous conservative fantasies in the name of pragmatism are now mired in a quicksand of philosophical insanity, where the more they struggle, the deeper they sink. It is simply not possible to adopt code words like, say, "personal responsibility" for three decades and then meaningfully address, for instance, the health care needs of the poor. It's not possible to warn people about "bureaucrats in Washington," and hope to garner broad support for large-scale government initiatives. Yet the Obama administration continues to counterproductively invest much of its energies in trying to make conservatives happy.

President Obama's former personal physician, Dr. David Scheiner, is not impressed by the President's health care legislation, and he lays the blame for its weaknesses squarely where it belongs. Scheiner told the Huffington Post on Tuesday that, "(The President's) pragmatism is what is overwhelming him. I think he's afraid that he can't get anything through if he doesn't go through this incredibly compromised program." The pragmatism Scheiner referred to has of course been the guiding light of Democratic politics for a long time. It was the de-facto motto of the Clinton administration and its so-called "centrist" supporters, both in congress and in groups like the Democratic Leadership Council.

But this isn't 1992, and the exit polls from last year's election showed very clearly that it was a rejection of the way conservative Republicans and "pragmatic" Democrats have been doing things for thirty years. Yet the Obama administration has ignored that mandate, and the power of a 60-40 Democratic Senate majority to pursue compromises with Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats that severely weakened the stimulus bill and are now eviscerating health care reform.

Emmanuel, in praising the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's efforts on behalf of the watered-down stimulus bill, said to Time Magazine, "(Pelosi) is fundamentally a pragmatic, put points on the board, get wins. I think the question -- and I've just always I get asked, you know, left vs. center, etc. The question isn't really a philosophical one of left vs. center. The question is are we moving forward or backwards?"

This was high praise from Emmanuel, an articulation of his deep faith in "the art of the possible." But for every momentary, incremental, Clintonite step "forward" gained by Emmanuel's m.o., the country takes two steps backward. The Obama administration may get a health care bill passed, but because it has let conservatives define the debate, it will be a bill that is written in the dark, in willful, near-lunatic denial of reality.

Americans live sicker, die younger and pay more for health care than the citizens of every other industrialized country on Earth. Yet conservatives have at least half the country believing that the heath care system that all those countries employ, a system paid for by everyone and benefiting everyone, is "socialist" and therefore evil (just like our "socialist" police departments, fire departments, libraries, highway system, military, postal service, schools, Veteran's Administration, Medicare, etc.)

Liberals are never going to win anything meaningful through compromise with a conservative movement that is grounded in that kind of paranoid fantasy. Each compromise lends more credence to a dissociative world-view, a hodgepodge of "positions" that aren't positions at all but lunging expressions of an incoherent, reactionary psychology that disdains the very idea of principled governance. To take the positions of modern conservatives seriously is to buy into the idea that positions should never be seriously taken. With its consistent, reflexive disdain for science, education, art, travel, minorities, empathy and the details of public policy, modern conservatism is less an ideology than a pathology, animated not by political idealism but resentment, tribalism and fear.

You can't debate policy with people who don't believe in policy. You can't govern with people who hate government. Internal Republican and Blue Dog memos and e-mails have revealed that many conservatives not only have no intention of negotiating in good faith for health care reform, but are determined to do everything possible to slow or derail the President's agenda.

Why did Obama never explain to the country the clear, indisputable superiority of a single payer health care system, or at least make a case for the long-term benefits of a strong public option, even one that requires deficit spending? Why has he instead thrown conservatives a bone by promising a health care bill that "won't add a penny to the deficit" (meaning, in practical terms, one with an under-funded or non-existent public option)? That gesture is an implicit endorsement of the premises that got us into this crisis in the first place. It buys into, for instance, the belief that government spending on anything other than the military is bad. It tacitly assumes that government bureaucrats do their jobs less well than the ones who work for Kaiser Permanente, Pfizer and Citigroup.

The endorsement of those assumptions by a Democratic President would be bad enough if they were the foundation of a coherent, fact-based conservative philosophy. But conservatives only adopt those assumptions when they're convenient. Republicans and Blue Dogs weren't worried about deficits when they showered the rich with trillions of dollars in tax breaks, while simultaneously waging two wars. Yet the Obama administration is treating the newfound Republican concern with frugality as an honest one, by making gestures that not only don't bring us any closer to the President's goals, but in fact retard progress.

The historical list of self-contradictory conservative positions is virtually infinite, from the simultaneous Republican support for, and antipathy towards, government intrusion into the personal lives of American citizens, to the simultaneous "rejection" and acceptance by several GOP governors of millions of dollars in Federal stimulus money. And the list of paranoid fantasies is just as long, from the Red Scare to the "missile gap", to WMD, "the homosexual agenda," and "terrorist fist-jabs;" from "welfare queens," to black helicopters, illegal immigrants, and, of course, our "socialist," "fascist", "racist" President.

It's almost a waste of breath for liberals to accuse Republicans of hypocrisy or fear mongering -- when we do we play right into the conservative caricature of us as lily-livered, egg-headed members of the "reality-based community." Conservatives sneer at the very idea of well-thought-out positions. They see well-articulated arguments as evidence of effeminate elitism. So we liberals temper our criticisms and couch them in the language of macho, pseudo-populism, and even adopt the postures of modern conservatism, but by doing so we accept many, if not all, of the fantastical premises underlying its worldview. The Obama administration should ignore the irrelevant, permanently obstructionist, paranoid Republican-Blue Dog minority in Congress and articulate a vigorous, unapologetic expression of clear-headed, progressive moral values. That's what they were elected to do. The country won't be able to overcome its very real problems as long as it is fighting imaginary enemies. To take most modern conservative "positions" seriously is not merely to give ground, it is to ratify delusions that make policy goals like meaningful health care reform impossible.

Comments

[freelyb]

Jane at Fire Dog Lake posits the best explanation I've seen yet for the mysterious "now you see it, now you don't" message on the public option from the administration:

http://campaignsilo.firedoglake.com/2009/08/19/the-baucus-caucus-phrma-insurance-hospitals-and-rahm/

In a detailed and well-researched article, she constructs a time-line of the various compromises made to date during the health care reform process. It looks as if the administration's top priority is to insure continued Democratic support from industry. Their commitment to both "bipartisan support" and to the implementation of an effective health care system is secondary to what industry wants. I guess it's relatively good news that they aren't particularly afraid of fossilized Congressional Republicans and their more radical constituents; but what they are afraid of -- losing dollars for Democratic campaign coffers -- guarantees a hopelessly watered-down and over-priced health care result.

This pattern of acquiescence to industry can obviously be generalized to include the financial sector , the energy sector, and drives every decision our new administration has put forth. They have been less than lukewarm about the interests of the citizenry. Will industry be allowed to dictate policy and buy votes in yet another round of government whOredom? It's up to us...

[QuietLightTraveler]

Obama thinks his approval numbers have dipped recently. Wait until a health care bill either doesn't pass or passes without a public option. Obama's mission of bipartisanism is a lost cause. He should have known better. To be bipartisan is to be ineffectual.

[Samalabear]

This is the same point that I've heard expressed in numerous articles recently:

"Why did Obama never explain to the country the clear, indisputable superiority of a single payer health care system, or at least make a case for the long-term benefits of a strong public option, even one that requires deficit spending?"

Jeff Cohen cited what happened in the Clinton Administration this way:

"Clinton's plan inspired few and confused many. After it went down in flames, talk radio host Jim Hightower asked President Clinton why he didn't back an easily-explained Medicare for All approach that had so much support in Congress. Clinton said he'd thought it was politically too difficult but now wondered about that judgment."

Is this type of "error in judgment" statement something we have to look forward to with Obama: Oops, my bad, error in judgment. The problem is we are sinking ship right now and I don't know if America can survive this kind of error in judgment. We know Obama is good at apologizing. Once he walks away from the WH with a future worth millions of bucks in speeches, book endorsements and whatever else, it will be a small matter for him to utter those words -- not to mention the primo health care he and his family will always enjoy.

[freelyb]

It's not an error in judgment, in my opinion. As it quickly became obvious that the public plan would likely trump industry health care over time in terms of costs and effectiveness, industry lobbyists were consciously solicited for their reactions. They were invited almost exclusively to bargaining tables that they had no business at. It's not an accident that the public plan has not been well-explained. It has been purely intentional. Get mad, it's valid.

[OdysseusNemesis]

Very insightful article, and it vexes one's heart that the President, it seems, invest much of his energies trying to make those who oppose him happy. This is a sign of weak leadership.

And one wonders how many people or groups are lined up to adopt this tactics, that is to say, oppose the President, and he will give in to pressure, seek compromise, and even invite you to “beer submits”.

Indeed “pragmatism” is defeatism with promises of future battles and hope of victories. The people that elected the President see themselves as winners and victors, and would be sadden if the person whom they elected turns out to be not what they think of themselves, namely, winners and victors.

[katermc]

I think you're right. I remember the first time I heard Dick Cheney speak -- at his first debate. It felt as if someone was trying to move things around in my mind, and I imagined him twisting my brain into knots. It was reminiscent of working with people diagnosed as psychotically paranoid. That's why I loved your reference to a "near lunatic denial of reality." When I listened to Obama the candidate, I felt this wonderful lightening of pressure in my chest, because he was sane; now I feel a terrible despair. I don't recognize him. He has become like every other politician I've listened to for the last 35-40 years. I've gone back and listened to speeches he and Michelle made during the campaign and I understand why I voted for him, but I've felt a deepening despair ever since he took office.

[XME]

Interesting article, and I agree with much of it...but I don't know that Obama is trying to make conservatives happy. I think he is trying to keep centerists from freaking out. Fact is most independents ARE independents because they are skittish about any legislation that is "extremely" consertavive OR progressive.

[NickMcH]

I think you are forgetting that the voting public is not all on the same page. Obama's pragmatism exists solely because there are people would run and shriek if more liberal policies were pushed. Now it is true that if we immediately went to a single-payer health care system we would completely upend an entire industry, you don't think that would cause some problems of its own? Your idealism turns into arrogance once you realize that for every "crazy" conservative idea there are actually some good ones too just the same with liberal ones. Ramrodding your visions down an unwilling audience's throat will not keep you in power.

[JayDubs]

Democrats weren't elected because America wanted a "vigorous, unapologetic expression of clear-headed, progressive moral values." Democrats were elected because Republicans over-reached and self-destructed. America hasn't really embraced strong liberal values. Except on social issues (less moralizing on personal issues like homesexuality, religion in schools, multi-culturalism, etc. and a general decline in support for gun control), America as a whole hasn't shifted that much in the last decade. Rather, its concluded that Republicans did a poor job of governing.

America is hoping the Dems can do better. If Democrats do a good job, fix the economy, and govern from the center, they will stay in power. If they over reach like they have in the past *cough assault weapons ban cough* and try to implement any utopia fantasies, they will lose power again to a reformed Republican party or a new centrist political party, whichever emerges from the current Republican death throes in 4-10 years.

[Mason]

WOW, you said it all and you said it well.

Thank you, Peter. for stating the unvarnished truth.

[Bellanova]

Peter, my man, you spoke my mind.

[Bellanova]

Excellent!

[fallingclam]

Amen. "Conservatives" have been determining the terms of discourse for decades. When we begin to speak their "language" we begin to lose. The dialogue should be between Progressives and the American people, not the Right.

[pragmaticdallasite]

Exaclty. Now somebody tell this to Ed Schultz, Keith Olbermann, and Rachel Maddow

[workerpower]

You are right. Before, they were voices in the wilderness, speaking truth to power. Now, they spend every evening fighting straw men. Rush Limbaugh, insidious though he is, has very little real power. The Republicans in Congress have less. Yet they seem to be the targets of their scrutiny, rather than big business and the Democrats that they own (I'm not saying that they own all of them, but many key Democrats are bought and sold by lobbyists, and in our current system of campaign financing, very few remain "pure"). Yeah, Palin and Steele and Rush and Bachmann are wacky, and fun to laugh at, but you won't have them to blame if healthcare reform falls through, or the economy doesn't recover. And if that happens, the Democrats will lose power as quickly and effortlessly as they gained it.

[pragmaticdallasite]

Best article I've read in a while......I'm printing this out for future reference.

Oh yeah and I really need to change my screen name!!!

[Aaror]

ok, deep breath and I am done, what does it cost you in piece of mind to have more criminals, beggers, and drug users? Even after you have paid for more police, more prisons, and even living in gated communities, you will feel less safe.
That is the cost of tax cuts!

[Aaror]

If you cut services, you create a nation where there is a large gap between the rich and poor, with either an anemic or powerless (or both) middle class. We used to call these nations banana republics or third world nations, before we became one.
Nations with high tax rates that provide for equality are derided as socialist, but guess what, they do better for their citizens than banana republics do. Why? Well, conservitives don't understand the idea of investment.
Say that I can either tax someone to pay for educating the poor, or avoid that tax. Any conservitive's knee-jerk reaction will be to avoid the tax. But for every dollar spent of education, you get $5 in tax revenue later because more productive citizens pay more taxes on their higher earnings.
But that isn't all, if you don't provide that education, smart kids with no options look for other ways to get ahead, primarily drugs and crime. Guess who pays to put them in prison? It is a lot cheaper to pay for 12 or even 16 years of education than to pay for 50 years of prison.
I'm not done yet, how much taxes does a person in prison pay? Zero!
Still going, birth rates are inversely related to opportunities, so you will have more poor people next generation if you don't educate them, and you have to pay for them!

[JayDubs]

A large portion of the conservative resistance to increased education funding comes from the view that throwing more money into public education benefits teachers unions instead of the students. While not always true, this is certainly the case in some areas. I'm sure you will find less resistance to increased school funding if more of it goes to charter schools or other places where teachers can be held accountable for student performance.

[Samalabear]

Sadly, this is a conservative view that I share based on my son's atrocious experience in the special education system of a very well-known "wealthy district" on Long Island. Believe me, the money does not go to the kids. Our property taxes are huge to pay for this "education" and yet the amount of fund raisers that are done throughout the year for the most basic things is enormous. Plus, it is impossible to get rid of "bad apple" teachers. I usually noticed that the bad apples were politically well-positioned while the good teachers were often marginalized -- kind of like Congress!