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This Strikes Us …
A Sojourner’s Truth Editorial
Oh yes, he did!
We’ve all heard the whispers, haven’t we? The
ones that began, oh … about 100 days after the inauguration
of the nation’s first black president.
What has he done?
Just last week, one of this paper’s guest
columns contained such accusations – that President Obama
has failed to accomplish anything, that his “Yes, We Can”
campaign rhetoric had bashed heads with Washington reality
and come up short.
But as pundits everywhere know, nothing quite
succeeds like success. And President Obama’s success in
getting the almost-universal health care coverage package
passed on Sunday night is a resounding accomplishment
indeed.
Obama accomplished what a number of
presidents over the past 100 years could not. That list
includes both Roosevelts, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon
(yes, indeed, Nixon, who probably came the closest over that
100-year struggle to pass a comprehensive health care plan –
one that Obama and today’s Democrats would have happily
accepted) Carter and, in recent times, Clinton.
Clinton, of course, suffered an embarrassing
defeat, a humiliation on universal health care coverage that
ultimately led to his party’s loss of control of Congress
two years into his presidency.
Now, with his own poll numbers sagging, Obama
had the opportunity to renew enthusiasm in his presidency
and, make no mistake about it, he did just that.
Americans just love the smell, the
appearance, of success. Especially success that comes from
bold action. Obama has taken just that type of bold action
to breathe life into the health care legislative process
even in the face of the loss of a crucial Senate seat in
Massachusetts. Ironically, of course, it was the seat that
the champion of health care legislation, Ted Kennedy, had
held since the dawn of time. And equally ironic was the fact
that it was Ted Kennedy’s endorsement that gave Obama’s
presidential aspirations such a boost. That endorsement came
after the candidate promised the Lion of the Senate that he
would give health care his early and undivided attention
upon assuming the Oval Office.
Nothing succeeds like success, as Obama
himself would note during the early primaries to explain his
miraculous ascendancy over Hillary Clinton.
Lyndon Johnson once remarked during the
terrible latter years of his presidency when nothing was
working in Vietnam that his standings in the polls would sky
rocket if he took bold action in that country – no matter
what type of bold action it was. If he nuclear bombed
Vietnam into oblivion or flew over hat-in-hand to ask Ho Chi
minh for peace, the result in the polls would be the same –
instant intensified popularity.
So let’s withhold comment on the actual
health care policy for the moment and ponder the political
consequences of the bill’s passage – presuming nothing
untoward happens in the Senate this week to derail the
process.
Polls show that Americans are deeply divided
on the health care package and that disapproval of the
current bill has risen over the past several months – signs
that might indicate Obama’s popularity could take another
hit.
However, polls also indicate that most
Americans – about 62 percent – want health care reform and
that opposition to government involvement has actually
decreased over the last several months. In other words, it’s
not the concept of universal health care coverage that has
been a problem for most Americans, it has been the political
process that has proved distasteful.
The polls also indicate that Americans, in
general, really know little about what’s in the massive,
2,000 page bill that supporters promise will include 32
million more Americans in the health care system within nine
years.
And the same polling numbers show that
Americans fault Republicans for their intransigence and
believe that Obama has been sincere in his efforts at
bi-partisanship.
All of these numbers indicate that the
Democrats will probably not take an unmanageable hit in the
2010 elections.
Obama stepped up and led the charge for
reform and now promises to go on tour touting the benefits
that Americans can expect from the legislation.
So nothing succeeds like success and as the
president hits the road, he has the aura of success about
him. The trek will probably prove to be more victory tour
than educational summit on what to expect from the bill.
There is, after all, an election coming up and the
Republicans will be rolling the dice and counting on voters
to express disenchantment with health care coverage reform
at the polls.
The problem with that strategy is that, as we
noted, Americans really do want health care coverage reform
and now that they have it, the ugliness of the process will
matter much less than it did just a few short days ago. |
