The jury is no longer out on Team Obama. Which means the verdict is in: So sure-handed at campaigning, so ham-handed at governing.
As Peggy Noonan would say: Paging Jimmy Carter. Paging former Pres. Jimmy Carter.
Exhibits A and B (in the past 48 hours):
Obama’s abandon ship! excursion into countering criticism of the White House healthcare reform/overhaul/government takeover, as reported in Politico.
Following a furor over how the data would be used, the White House has shut down an electronic tip box — flag@whitehouse.gov — that was set up to receive information on “fishy” claims about President Barack Obama’s health plan.
It was also labeled by Texas chainsaw Sen. John Cornyn the “Obama monitoring program” (hat tip: George Orwell). Obama mouthpiece Robert Gibbs contended, “Nobody is keeping anybody’s names,” but nobody with a name believes that.
Then there’s Obama’s moonwalk on a public (translation: you pay for it) option in his healthcare reform/overhaul/government takeover. As in, he’s willing to drop it.
The White House, facing increasing skepticism over President Obama’s call for a public insurance plan to compete with the private sector, signaled Sunday that it was willing to compromise and would consider a proposal for a nonprofit health cooperative being developed in the Senate. [New York Times]
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said the public option was “not essential,” while Obama himself called it “a small piece of a broader initiative.”
Yeah, I got your broader initiative right here.
Noonan, for her part, says Obama’s problem is, he’s increasingly “slippery.”
When Mr. Obama stays above the fray, above the nitty-gritty of specifics, when he confines his comments on health care to broad terms, he more and more seems . . . pretty slippery. In [last week’s Portsmouth, NH] town hall he seemed aware of this, and he tried to be very specific about the need for this aspect of a plan, and the history behind that proposal. And yet he seemed even more slippery.
Me, I’d downgrade Obama from slippery to – Paging Bill Clinton, paging former Pres. Bill Clinton – downright slick.
Campaign Outsider 
So when I want to know where things stand on Obama, I should go to Noonan and Politico? Give me a break.
Obama has started to grow a spine on the public option, and Sibelius was forced to walk back her comments.
I wish Obama would govern with the courage of Reagan. He campaigned on the public option and he won on the public option. That’s where he should stay. It’s the only smart political move. If he tries to compromise he’ll lose his base and he won’t have the votes – health reform will fail and his base will bolt. If he sticks with public option, he may or may not fail, but his base will be intact, and ’10 and ’12 become further referendums on health care. I’m not sure that would be a good thing for Republicans.
Hey, Steve – go where you want. All I’m asking from Obama is that he be honest: if he needs to compromise, just say that instead of doling out a gallon of revisionist eyewash.
It is interesting that winning elections in ’10 and ’12 have become more important to Steve Stein than a well crafted, effective health care reform bill.
I suspect his view is held by many.
Where does good governance fit into this view of the world?
In my view, “good governance” and an “effective health care reform bill” include a public option. One of the main problems with US health care is cost control, and you won’t get cost control without a viable public option.
So, I say that’s what the Dems should finally settle on. Then in passes (in which case we have “good governance”), or it fails (in which case the ’10 and ’12 elections are referenda on health care… well, they probably are either way).
Clear enough?
err, Then *it* passes
The latest turn of events in the health care maelstrom is disheartening. I expect the mainstream media to miss the point and focus on the town hall (un)intelligencia ranting about Nazis, death panels, Socialists and the like. I had hoped, however, that Obama remembered that he won the election handily, which gives his party the chance to enact its policies. Rather than treat the presidency like the bully pulpit that it is, Obama is behaving like someone about to hire a caterer. Instead of telling the caterer what he wants on the menu, Obama wants to sample different dishes before he decides (provided that every one of his guests also likes the meal he selects).
Single payer never gets an airing, and now the public option is diminished in importance. A panel gives 3 GOP Senators the same clout as 3 Democratic Senators despite the wide disparity in the full Senate. In the end, either the Dems are too afraid of Fox News and talk radio to follow their conscience, or they enjoy the health care lobbyists’ tribute as much as their GOP counterparts. It’s not health reform if prescriptions are still unaffordable and options for those with meager finances limited.
Unfortunately, Steve, I think your view of the hybrid public option being proposed is not a valid solution to the problem. It would not be an option for very long.
Better to go to the mandated universal care of the Massachusetts model and let the marketplace select the winners and losers in the insurer world.
What needs to be well understood is that it that any health care reform will not me revenue neutral, and will still lead to some level of limitation on health care that is actually provided.
Curgmudgeon, I don’t follow your reasoning. Public/private hybrids work plenty good enough in other places (France, for instance – the best health care system in the world). The problem I have with the Mass model is that there’s very little cost containment. (I can see how this might be different with a national implementation, but I can see how it would be a big giveaway to health insurers, too.)
There are already limitations on health care that is actually provided, even for the insured. So I don’t see why that objection is germane.
The public/private hybrid networks of other countries are based on the assumption of much more government involvement in the society and economy than the American public would support.
The comment on limitations was merely a recognition that rationing of health care is inherent in any program that hopes both to expand coverage and to limit costs.
Well, recognize that rationing of health care is inherent in any program that hopes to limit costs. That is, it’s inherent in US health care as presently constituted.
I didn’t realize that the existing US Health care was the subject.
Of course it is rationed…
The assessment remains the same no matter when coverage and cost are in the same equation.