Game Over

I felt like posting something about this week in politics, since it has been an extraordinary week. Particularly, the State of the Union address and the "question time" session between President Obama and the GOP have had me thinking about the situation in Washington and what needs to happen next.

President Obama pretty much hit the bullseye by having that public dialogue with the opposition party, and by suggesting that there should be more of these meetings in the future. What a relief it is to have an opportunity to see our elected officials actually discussing something substantive, and bringing some meat to the conversation, instead of rerunning the same old, worn out and meaningless talking points they trot out on the talk shows. That's not to say that there was no rhetoric during the Q&A session, but there was definitely a higher level of effort made on both sides to act like grownups and at least try to get somewhere.

Yet, it apparently wasn't enough to make a lasting change in the way things work in D.C. On Meet the Press this morning, there was John Boehner, as unnaturally orange of face as ever, holding firm on the party line and insisting that the GOP have "an obligation to stand on principle". He explained that the American people expect their representatives to do this, and that this is their primary job on Capitol Hill.

That's when I started to yell at my TV. How wrong-headed can a guy be, especially after some really clear and obvious signs from the public that we expect our government to step up their game? Part of the problem, it occurs to me, is that the GOP have gotten confused about exactly which game it is that they are playing.

They seem to think that politics is just a big football game. Maybe it's because of the Super Bowl or something. But they act as if the idea is to have two opposing teams, one playing offense and the other playing defense, with the only objective being to score points for your own team and prevent the other team from scoring.

Which begs the question that, to me, seems pretty obvious: how does that make things happen that need to happen in this country? How does it assist job creation, health care reform, national security, long-term fiscal stability, or anything else? If either party decides to just hold the line and block the other guys for 4 years, waiting until it's their turn to get the ball back and run the kind of plays they want to run, we get nowhere and nothing gets better. You can't just say that you are content to bide time until the other team runs out of downs. That's NOT the job that Boehner and the other D.C. dipsticks were elected to do. They were elected to work out how to fix the problems and meet the challenges that face our nation.

Unfortunately, the GOP feels that protecting their particular ideology is all that matters, and that if the nation as a whole has to suffer a while longer while they protect it, then that's just how it has to be. Now, I'm not here to say that either side needs to just roll over, abandon their beliefs and make nice for the sake of it. But what I truly believe, especially after watching the Q&A session this week, is that there are probably many more areas of common ground between the left and the right than they care to acknowledge, and that many ideas that might actually work are being shunned by Republicans not because the ideas are bad, but because they are being proposed by the Obama administration or the Democrats.

I guess, according to what Boehner says, the Republicans will look back on the Obama presidency as nothing more than an inconvenient speed bump on the road to their next period as the majority party. It will not be a time during which any progress is made, nor will it be a time where the GOP will assume responsibility for any work that needs to be done. All they're there for, from what they're saying, is to stave off as many Democratic efforts as possible and preserve their ideology so it's ready to go when the next Republican Congress and President show up. If this is their definition of leadership, no wonder this country's going down the shitter so quickly.

True leadership is about intelligence, open-mindedness and flexibility. Without those qualities, you can't properly assess a situation, or figure out the best way to deal with it. You have to be able to acknowledge that circumstances are never constant - that there is always some new variable, some unexpected factor, that gets thrown into the mix. An unwavering ideology is never going to be able to provide solutions for all the problems we face. There must be creative thought, there must be cooperation, and there must be mutual effort. Most importantly, that effort must be made on behalf of the nation and not merely to serve a particular party. Otherwise, who benefits? We regular folks just continue to suffer for 4 years while they screw around, and the mess that the next guy (be he a Republican or Democrat) must clean up just gets bigger and bigger. How is this a good result for anyone?

We need to let the GOP know that the football game has to end. We need to change the rules of play entirely to ensure that the interests of the people are what matters, and not the partisan point-scoring. If Boehner and the Republicans continue to defend and excuse their obstructionism by saying it's what they were elected to do, they will fail to truly serve the people who elected them. And as we are seeing at ballot boxes around the nation, voters are quick to discard the people who fail to serve their interests well, regardless of their party affiliation. No one is safe, and no ideology is sacred. People can't feed their families or pay their bills with ideologies. The GOP will need to come up with a better game plan than merely being defenders of the faith, because the nation's faith in politicians who do nothing has finally run dry.

Game Over

Senator Ted Kennedy and his health care dream

As y’all know, I’ve been out of the blog loop for ages. I just have too much else to do to bother with it in general. But today, I do find myself wanting to post something on the passing of Senator Ted Kennedy, and on the continuing fight over health care reform. 

The man wasn’t a saint; he was a Kennedy, after all, and a politician. Still, Senator Kennedy was an amazing force of nature in his legislative life, and a man who actually had the fortitude to stick to his guns on any issue that was important to him. In the face of resistance and anger from many of his colleagues in Washington – often including those in his own party – Kennedy never wavered when he believed that he was doing the right thing. And as the reviews of his career as a lawmaker have been reminding us over the past 36 hours, he was doing the right thing more often than not. A man born to privilege, without any need to concern himself with those of a lower economic station, became the champion of the poor, the victimized, the desperate. He genuinely wanted to help people with the work he did as a member of Congress, and that is not something that can be said with a straight face or a clear conscience about almost any other politician in our nation today. 

In today’s New York Times, there are many articles, reports and rememberances regarding Senator Kennedy. As I read through the paper this morning, one sentence jumped out at me from all the newsprint. In an editorial about Kennedy, the Times wrote that the senator always held fast to the conviction “that politics be grasped and administered throught the prism of human needs”. This struck me like a lightning bolt from the blue. It is a crystal clear reminder of what the American government should be about, and a reminder of how far those in power have strayed from that noble ideal.

 In the current debate about health care reform, Kennedy’s passion and main focus for decades, we have seen our elected officials at their worst. We have witnessed lies, distortions and scare tactics on one side, developed and propagated for no other reason than to mislead the public and block any reasonable discussion of the facts. On the other side, we have seen proponents of reform failing to respond strongly or quickly enough, and we have seen many taking the path of least resistance, giving up on important points of reform (like the public option) in order to move things along more smoothly and just get something – ANYTHING – passed. In all of this, we have been let down in a huge way by those who have been sent to Washington to do their best on our behalf.

 What about “the prism of human needs”? Many in Washington (and in the voting public) have been brainwashed into believing that the fundamental obligation of our government should be to protect capitalism. Nothing could be further from the truth, or from the intentions of this country’s founding fathers. This was always intended to be a nation of betters – better freedoms, better opportunities, better ways of life. Our elected officials have a duty to make sure that these things are available to every American citizen. Why should we stand back and accept the nonsense that is currently being spouted by those politicians whose only concern is to protect the market? Businesses should not be the priority here – people should. There is a gaping hole and a staggering inequity within our current health care system, and any politician who refuses to address this in a meaningful way, out of concern for the health of the free market, doesn’t deserve to represent the citizens of this nation.

Let there be no doubt, no distortion, about this fundamental truth: the American government DOES NOT exist for the purpose of protecting capitalism. It must allow it, and it must provide space for it to flourish, but it must not aid and abet capitalism at the expense of the struggling among us. It must not be so beholden to industry that it fails to provide for those citizens who cannot find the help they need within the current system. It must not favor business out of a sense of obligation to the biggest donors, the loudest lobbyists, or the most powerful political action groups.

 This reform movement has been framed by many opponents as a choice between a complete government takeover of the health care industry and a healthy free market. This rhetoric serves as a powerful tool for influencing peoples’ opinions, but it is not grounded in reality. What this reform bil is actually about is a choice between the rights of citizens and the rights of companies. The main objection that the anti-reform people have is that a public option would make it more difficult for private insurance companies to thrive.

 Let’s examine that concern for a moment: the insurance industry, which has prospered for decades by offering as little coverage or compensation as legally possible to millions of Americans who are in need, might not be able to make the kind of money it’s used to making if the low-cost, universally-available government insurance program becomes a reality. This, according to the opponents of reform, is akin to socialism. If I may paraphrase Barney Frank, on what planet do these people spend most of their time?

 If the town hall warriors and their leaders would give the bill an honest reading, they’d know that creating and providing a government-run health care program, ALONGSIDE private insurance, is the real goal here. Nobody wants to dismantle private insurers, or remove the option of private insurance from those who wish to pay for it. It is certainly true that a government-run program would make a huge dent in the bottom-line profits of private insurance companies. But why is this socialism? The government has no responsibility to ensure that businesses are always successful, or that companies may exist without competition from any other source. And as many calmer and more rational experts on the subject have pointed out, the US Postal Sevice never put FedEx or UPS out of business. There has been room for all of them to co-exist and grow. If the Postal Service didn’t exist, then FedEx and UPS executives would be a whole lot richer, without a doubt. But that does not mean that the government-run Postal Service is a socialist entity. It means that the commercial services like FedEx and UPS need to be more competitive in order to attract and keep customers, and there’s nothing wrong with making a company work for its money.

 

It is precisely this point that makes this such a clear-cut situation. The insurance and health care industries haven’t got any competition to force them into being more reasonable in their treatment of customers. They have been allowed to reign unchallenged, and it has made them all-powerful. Anyone who has ever experienced the frustration of arguing with a representative over their coverage, or who has been dropped or denied coverage based on a pre-existing condition, knows how dangerous that sort of unchecked power can be to the average American. Unchecked power over health or illness, over life or death, in the hands of corporations whose only motive is profit-based, should not be protected by the government and should not be considered the American ideal.

Opponents of reform also like to make dire predictions about how bad it would be for the government to control any part of the health care system. The scary talk about how medical services will be rationed by the government? Pure rubbish. Nothing in the bill calls for any form of rationing. Moreover, access to doctors, medications and procedures are most definitely rationed in America right at this moment – except that it is the insurance and medical industries who are doing the rationing.  Only the fortunate ones receive coverage, and out of those who are covered, only a fraction receive top-notch, complete coverage. Is this OK with everyone who opposes reform? Is it really more acceptable to allow companies to pick and choose a handful of people to insure while the majority of Americans are left without protection, simply because it would be far too financially damaging to the company to actually insure sick people?

 The bottom line is that without a public option, any reform bill will be inefficient to truly bring about the changes that are so desperately needed in our health care system. There may be honest arguments had about how to make it happen, and the details will require a lot of work to figure out. But blocking it from happening should not be the goal of any politician or citizen who wants the best for their country and their countrymen. America is one of the last prosperous industrialized nations in the world to consider or implement some form of government-run health insurance. That fact ought to be the scariest one of all to anyone who is paying attention.

And those politicians who are trying to stay in the good graces of the insurance and medical industries by distorting facts and lying to us ought to be ashamed of themselves. Particularly today, when the world is looking back and remembering the singular efforts of the late Senator Ted Kennedy. Most legislators could never come close to the type of tireless effort he put into his work over his lifetime. But maybe they could at least try. Maybe they could take just a moment to clear ther heads of the rabid partisanship and take a clearer look at what it is they were really elected to accomplish, and who they were really elected to represent. Senator Kennedy never forgot why he was in Washington, and maybe his passing will remind some of his colleagues to use “the prism of human needs” to gain a better perspective on how to best meet the challenges ahead.

Senator Ted Kennedy and his health care dream