Health Care a Symbol of Worse to Come if Obama Fails
22 July 2009 12:32 pm by Taylor Marsh
This gives me no pleasure to say, but the reality is ripe to manifest. Don’t think for a minute that the health care debate playing out hasn’t already become a model for how Obama’s adversaries will take on his other policy prescriptions. Go back to Rush Limbaugh’s “I hope Obama fails.” This has always been the rallying cry, propped up by the excuse that they’re simply talking about his policy prescriptions. Right now, health care is the model. If Republicans succeed in scuttling reform or making the final bill something that is unworkable, they will replicate this campaign for everything else they want to defeat.
So, it’s unfortunate that here we go again with secrets surrounding health care reform, a prime reason “Hillarycare” went south. It’s as if Obama is taking George W. Bush’s philosophy of ignoring all things Clinton by pretending there aren’t lessons to learn from WJC’s two-term presidency.
That Obama thinks channeling on health care what Dick Cheney did on his energy meetings is a good thing should remind everyone of what happens when ambitious politicians become members of the Presidents Club.
Invoking an argument used by President George W. Bush, the Obama administration has turned down a request from a watchdog group for a list of health industry executives who have visited the White House to discuss the massive healthcare overhaul.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sent a letter to the Secret Service asking about visits from 18 executives representing health insurers, drug makers, doctors and other players in the debate. The group wants the material in order to gauge the influence of those executives in crafting a new healthcare policy.
…A White House spokesman, Ben LaBolt, said, “We are reviewing our policy on access to visitor logs and related litigation.”
As a candidate, President Obama vowed that in devising a healthcare bill he would invite in TV cameras — specifically C-SPAN — so that Americans could have a window into negotiations that normally play out behind closed doors.
Josh Orton reminds us what candidate Obama did to Hillary Clinton during the primaries over transparency.
During one of the recent Democratic debates, Obama, criticizing the secrecy of Clinton’s 1993 effort to reform healthcare, talked about how he would open up the entire process — “Not negotiating behind closed doors, but bringing all parties together, and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN …”
Obama’s hypocrisy is choking.
My friend Peter Daou comes at this another way in Obama’s Presidency Will NOT Be Defined By Health Reform (The “Waterloo” Myth). Peter goes on to cite important policy issues that matter as much as health care, on which he is correct. But Peter misses the larger point.
Whether its secret meetings with health care industry honchos, or the missteps on marketing health care out of the White House, the debate on universal health care has the potential to become THE symbol of the Obama presidency. And not in a good way.
Pres. Obama came in with record approval numbers here and across the world. His outreach to the world, but particularly the Muslim world, has been greeted with unanimous praise and hope. But at a time when the American people, in a large plurality, have weighed in that they want universal health care, Obama has allowed the naysayers to hijack, not only the debate, but the positive impact of national health care, even when the numbers began strongly on his side. Slowly, we’ve seen these numbers erode. Why? Because the White House naively thought their bipartisan call would be greeted warmly and that Barack Obama would become the political exception to the rule of national politics.
So, the health care debate could become a symbol of Barack Obama’s presidency and how even the mighty can fall, if the opposition, including some in his own party, come at him hard enough.
Then all those things Peter cites, civil liberties and detainee treatment, gay rights, stopping environmental degradation, re-examining our Afghan policy, etc., will not mean a thing. Because they’ll all be seen through the prism of being able to outwit Obama on health care, so the “I hope Obama fails” of stopping Obama’s policy changes will be set.
What worries me the most is as goes health care, so may go Middle East progress. Because this onslaught that seems to be working, with Obama playing into his adversaries hands through his secret meeting hypocrisy, will embolden the Netanyahu settlement builders and the AIPAC crowd. Inspiring them to oppose Obama just like the anti health care reform zealots are doing now, thinking if one “Waterloo” can manifest when the people want what was defeated, scuttling Obama’s Middle East agenda will be easy.
The “Waterloo myth,” as Peter cites, isn’t a myth at all right now. The symbol has been hoisted. It all depends what happens on health care. Unfortunately, even if Obama succeeds, the seeds have been planted that his health care reform isn’t the best prescription, which means Obama’s health care reform could become the rallying cry for 2010 and beyond.
If that’s not defining Obama’s presidency by health care reform, I don’t know what is.
