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What a Disaster; Krauthammer and Noonan on the HCB
Topic Started: Mar 5 2010, 02:47 PM (256 Views)
Jeff
Senior Carp
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/03/05/the_health_care_bill_is_a_failure.html

March 5, 2010
Why the Health Care Bill is a Failure
By Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON -- So the yearlong production, set to close after Massachusetts' devastatingly negative Jan. 19 review, saw the curtain raised one last time. Obamacare lives.

After 34 speeches, three sharp electoral rebukes (Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts) and a seven-hour seminar, the president announced Wednesday his determination to make one last push to pass his health care reform.

The final act was carefully choreographed. The rollout began a week earlier with a couple of shows of bipartisanship: a Feb. 25 Blair House "summit" with Republicans, followed five days later with a few concessions tossed the Republicans' way.

Show is the operative noun. Among the few Republican suggestions President Obama pretended to incorporate was tort reform. What did he suggest to address the plague of defensive medicine that a Massachusetts Medical Society study showed leads to about 25 percent of doctor referrals, tests and procedures being done for no medical reason? A few ridiculously insignificant demonstration projects amounting to one-half of one-hundredth of 1 percent of the cost of Obama's health care bill.

As for the Blair House seminar, its theatrical quality was obvious even before it began. The Democrats had already decided to go for a purely partisan bill. Obama signaled precisely that intent at the end of the summit show -- then dramatically spelled it out just six days later in his 35th health care speech: He is going for the party-line vote.

Unfortunately for Democrats, that seven-hour televised exercise had the unintended consequence of showing the Republicans to be not only highly informed on the subject, but also, as even Obama was forced to admit, possessed of principled objections -- contradicting the ubiquitous Democratic/media meme that Republican opposition was nothing but nihilistic partisanship.

Republicans did so well, in fact, that in his summation, Obama was reduced to suggesting that his health care reform was indeed popular because when you ask people about individual items (for example, eliminating exclusions for pre-existing conditions or capping individual out-of-pocket payments) they are in favor.

Yet mystifyingly they oppose the whole package. How can that be?

Allow me to demystify. Imagine a bill granting every American a free federally delivered ice cream every Sunday morning. Provision 2: steak on Monday, also home delivered. Provision 3: A dozen red roses every Tuesday. You get the idea. Would each individual provision be popular in the polls? Of course.

However (life is a vale of howevers) suppose these provisions were bundled into a bill that also spelled out how the goodies are to be paid for and managed -- say, half a trillion dollars in new taxes, half a trillion in Medicare cuts (cuts not to keep Medicare solvent but to pay for the ice cream, steak and flowers), 118 new boards and commissions to administer the bounty-giving, and government regulation dictating, for example, how your steak was to be cooked. How do you think this would poll?

Perhaps something like 3-1 against, which is what the latest CNN poll shows is the citizenry's feeling about the current Democratic health care bills.

Late last year, Democrats were marveling at how close they were to historic health care reform, noting how much agreement had been achieved among so many factions. The only remaining detail was how to pay for it.

Well, yes. That has generally been the problem with democratic governance: cost. The disagreeable absence of a free lunch.

Which is what drove even strong Obama supporter Warren Buffett to go public with his judgment that the current Senate bill, while better than nothing, is a failure because the country desperately needs to bend the cost curve down and the bill doesn't do it. Buffett's advice would be to start over and get it right with a bill that says "we're just going to focus on costs and we're not going to dream up 2,000 pages of other things."

Obama has chosen differently, however. The time for debate is over, declared the nation's seminar leader in chief. The man who vowed to undo Washington's wicked ways has directed the Congress to ram Obamacare through, by one vote if necessary, under the parliamentary device of "budget reconciliation." The man who ran as a post-partisan is determined to remake a sixth of the U.S. economy despite the absence of support from a single Republican in either house, the first time anything of this size and scope has been enacted by pure party-line vote.

Surprised? You can only be disillusioned if you were once illusioned.


http://www.peggynoonan.com/

What a Disaster Looks Like

ObamaCare will have been a colossal waste of time—if we’re lucky.

The Wall Street Journal: March 4, 2010

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 that he did not include or envelop congressional Republicans from the outset, but handed 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.

His political mistakes were myriad and perhaps can be reduced to this:
There are all sorts of harm a new president can do to his presidency. Right now, part of the job of a new president in a hypermediaized environment is harm avoidance. This sounds defensive, and is at odds with the wisdom that presidents in times of crisis must boldly go forth and break through. But it all depends on what you’re being bold about. Why, in 2009, create a new crisis over an important but secondary issue when we already have the Great Recession and two wars? Prudence and soundness of judgment are more greatly needed at the moment.

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.

In Washington among sympathetic political hands (actually, most of them sound formerly sympathetic) you hear the word “intervention,” as in: “So-and-so tried an intervention with the president and it didn’t work.” So-and-so tried to tell him he’s in trouble with the public and must moderate, recalibrate, back off from health care. The end of the story is always that so-and-so got nowhere. David Gergen a few weeks ago told the Financial Times the administration puts him in mind of the old joke: “How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb? Only one. But the lightbulb must want to change. I don’t think President Obama wants to make any changes.”

Sometimes when I look at the past three chief executives, I wonder if we were witnessing not three presidencies but three psychodramas played out on an intensely public stage.

What accounts for Mr. Obama’s confidence and certainty?

Well, if you were a young progressive who’d won the presidency by a comfortable margin in a center-right country, you just might think you were a genius. You might not be surprised to find yourself surrounded by a cultish admiration: “They see him as a fabled figure,” said a frequent White House visitor of some on the president’s staff.

You might think the great strength you demonstrated during the campaign—an ability to stay in the game you’re playing and not the game someone else is playing, an ability to proceed undistracted by the crises or the machinations of your opponents, but to just keep playing your slow and steady game—is a strength suitable to your presidency. If you choose to play health care, that’s the game you play, straight through, no jeers from the crowd distracting you.

If you were a young progressive who’d won the presidency against the odds, you probably wouldn’t see yourself as someone who lucked out, with the stars perfectly aligned for a liberal victory. And you might forget we are more or less and functionally a 50-50 country, and that you have to keep your finger very much on the pulse of the people if you’re to survive and prosper.
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.

This is a delicate business. You can’t be all rosy glow, you have to be candid. But attitude and mood matter. America has reached the point, a year and a half into the crisis, when frankly it needs some cheerleading. It can’t always be mourning in America. We need some inspiration from the top, need someone who can speak with authority of what is working and can be made to work, of what is good and cause for pride. We are still employing 130 million people, and America is still competitive in the world, with innovative business leaders and practices.

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? Rep. Bart Stupak said Thursday that he and several of his fellow Democrats won’t vote for the Senate version of the bill because it says right there on page 2,069 that the federal government would directly subsidize abortions. The bill’s proponents say this isn’t so. 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. Which, obviously, won’t happen, for three reasons. First, they enjoy his discomfort. Second, they believe the bill is not worth saving, that at this point no matter what it contains—and 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.


Edited by Jeff, Mar 6 2010, 10:57 AM.
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Jeff
Senior Carp
No responses? Everyone agrees with them? :)
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Kincaid
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HOLY CARP!!!
yep!
Kincaid - disgusted Republican Partisan since 2006.
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Jeff
Senior Carp
Good to see Ax and Quirt agree!

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/03/07/its_not_the_staff_its_the_policies_104676.html

It's Not the Staff, It's the Policies
By Jack Kelly
Perhaps the surest sign an administration is in trouble comes when members of the president's political party start saying in public the president must shake up his staff.

The Obama administration has accomplished the remarkable feat of alienating both most moderates and many left wingers. The moderates see what he's trying to do, and are frightened and angry. The moonbats note that he hasn't yet been able to do it, and are frustrated and angry.

The head liberals would most like to see roll is that of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who, they think, is too willing to compromise.

"The Rahm Emanuel that Obama hired is the poster child for the timid, pseudo-pragmatism that is inimical to the idealistic Obama agenda so many excited voters responded to last November," wrote former Washington Post blogger Dan Froomkin.

The president "needs a chief of staff with the wisdom to help point him down a bold, progressive path," wrote Matthew Rothschild, editor of the Progressive.

Mr. Froomkin and Mr. Rothschild are under the illusion Mr. Obama's unpopular liberal policies would be more popular if they were more liberal.

One who is not so deluded is Leslie Gelb, who is the epitome if not the acme of the Democratic foreign policy establishment. (A former New York Times foreign affairs columnist and assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration, Mr. Gelb is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.)

Mr. Gelb says of Mr. Emanuel that "no one I've talked to believes he has the management skills and discipline to run the White House."

Mr. Emanuel is a foul-mouthed jerk who may lack management skills. But, noted Dana Milbank of The Washington Post, the Obama administration would be more popular if the president had followed his advice.

According to Mr. Milbank, Mr. Emanuel opposed the failed effort to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay within a year and the decision to hold a civilian trial in New York City for 9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Mr. Emanuel also favored a smaller, genuinely bipartisan health care bill.

"Arguably, Emanuel is the only person keeping Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter," Mr. Milbank concluded.

Despite his many flaws, Mr. Emanuel is the closest thing to a grownup in President Obama's inner circle. The others in it share an adoration of Mr. Obama, malleable ethics and inexperience on the national stage.

Former Chicago Tribune reporter David Axelrod is a skilled media and political guy who is the Karl Rove of this administration. But Mr. Rove played little role in formulating foreign or economic policy. That Mr. Axelrod does indicates Mr. Obama is more interested in sizzle than in substance.

After Mr. Axelrod, the most influential aide is Chicago slumlord Valerie Jarrett, who encouraged Mr. Obama to travel to Copenhagen last summer in his embarrassingly futile bid to bring the 2016 Olympics to Chicago.

The key thing to remember about Mr. Obama's aides is that he chose them. Shaking up a troubled presidential staff is mostly an exercise in reshuffling deck chairs on the Titanic because each administration takes on the characteristics of its chief. There is a reason why Richard Nixon's chief aides were conspiratorial; that so many in the George W. Bush administration were mediocre; that so many in the Clinton administration were corrupt.

Deck-chair shuffling continues, in part, because members of the president's party find it safer to criticize the king's courtiers than the king himself; in part because they retain illusions about the president. (He's really a good guy on our side. He's just been let down by corrupt/incompetent/inexperienced aides. All will be well if a few heads roll.) But policy won't change unless the president changes.

After a start nearly as bad as Mr. Obama's, President Clinton made a successful mid-course correction. But Mr. Clinton was more interested in holding onto power and in having sex than in advancing any particular policy. Mr. Obama is more ideological, and thus less inclined to make a major shift toward the center.

Mr. Clinton also had had 10 years of executive experience as governor of Arkansas and a circle of intimates that wasn't restricted to radicals and Chicago political thugs.

Only Barack Obama can keep Barack Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter. But he doesn't seem so inclined.
Edited by Jeff, Mar 7 2010, 05:49 AM.
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Mikhailoh
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
I'm not sure how true it is, but it sure was a fun read. A very different perspective.
Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball
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QuirtEvans
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I Owe It All To John D'Oh
I'm not sure who the hell Jack Kelly is. However, a brief look at his articles on Real Clear Politics suggests he has a major hard-on for Obama.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/author/jack_kelly/
It would be unwise to underestimate what large groups of ill-informed people acting together can achieve. -- John D'Oh, January 14, 2010.
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Mikhailoh
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
I didn't have to do any research to pick up on that. :lol:
Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball
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Jeff
Senior Carp
Noonan was something of a closet Obamaphile for a while, so her deep alienation is indicative.

Krauthammer has always been a principled critic of Obama; his arguments in this article are irrefutable and fact-based.

Kelly is of course a second-tier rabble-rouser, but again, his criticisms of the "good king mislead by bad advisors" observations in this particular article are also spot on.

(And lest someone complain that I quoted someone I know is a second-tier right-wing rabble rouser, I try to go by the argument not the source. I have also quoted FireDogLake - whose articles on health care are sometimes cogent and fact based - and lefty radical Noam Chomsky, depending on the argument and position.)

Edited by Jeff, Mar 7 2010, 08:31 AM.
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