Punch line: ObamaCare’s essential mistake is to choose health-care expansion over health-care reform.
Another insightful column from Peggy Noonan.
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Excerpted from WSJ: What a Disaster Looks Like , Mar 5, 2010
ObamaCare will have been a colossal waste of time—if we’re lucky.
It is now exactly a year since President Obama unveiled his health care push and his decision to devote his inaugural year to it—his branding year, his first, vivid year.
What a disaster it has been.
At best it was a waste of history’s time, a struggle that will not in the end yield something big and helpful but will in fact make future progress more difficult. At worst it may prove to have fatally undermined a new presidency at a time when America desperately needs a successful one.
In terms of policy, his essential mistake was to choose health-care expansion over health-care reform. This at the exact moment voters were growing more anxious about the cost and reach of government.
The practical mistake was handing the bill’s creation over to a Democratic Congress that was becoming a runaway train. This at the exact moment Americans were coming to be concerned that Washington was broken, incapable of progress, frozen in partisanship.
New presidents should never, ever, court any problem that isn’t already banging at the door. They should never summon trouble.
Mr. Obama did, boldly, perhaps even madly. And this is perhaps the oddest thing about No Drama Obama: In his first year as president he created unneeded political drama, and wound up seen by many Americans not as the hero but the villain.
And now here are two growing problems for Mr. Obama.
The first hasn’t become apparent yet, but I suspect will be presenting itself, and soon. In order to sharpen the air of crisis he seems to think he needed to get his health-care legislation passed, in order to continue the air of crisis that might justify expanding government and sustaining its costs, and in order, always, to remind voters of George W. Bush, Mr. Obama has harped on what a horror the economy is. How great our challenges, how wicked our businessmen, how dim our future.
The president can’t be a hope purveyor while he’s a doom merchant, and he appears to believe he has to be a doom merchant to justify ramming through his legislation. This particular legislation is not worth that particular price.
All this contributes to a second problem, which is a growing credibility gap. In his speech Wednesday, demanding an “up or down” vote, the president seemed convinced and committed — but nothing he said sounded true. His bill will “bring down the cost of health care for millions,” it is “fully paid for,” it will lower the long term deficit by a trillion dollars.
Does anyone believe this?
Does anyone who knows the ways of government, the compulsions of Congress, and how history has played out in the past, believe this? Even a little?
It would be a relief to have a president who could weigh in believably and make clear what his own bill says. But he seems to devote more words to obscuring than clarifying.
The only thing that might make his assertions sound believable now is if a group of congressional Republicans were standing next to him on the podium and putting forward a bill right along with him.
GOP support won’t happen, for three reasons. First, they enjoy Obama’s discomfort. Second, they believe the bill is not worth saving, that at this point no matter what it contains —a nd at this point most people can no longer retain in their heads what it contains — it has been fatally tainted by the past year of mistakes and inadequacies.
And the third reason is that the past decade has taught them what a disaster looks like, and they’ve lost their taste for standing next to one.
Full article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704187204575101742162779612.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h
The Homa Files 
March 5, 2010 at 4:37 pm |
Geeze, it only took 12 months for Noonan to catch a clue. She sure has been brutal once she figured it out.