The President tonight finally pulls out all the Big Guns of Rhetoric, ascends the Bully Pulpit, and addresses a Joint Session of Congress as well as the American people about his legislative and societal vision for Health Care Coverage Reform.<\/p>\n
(We keep dancing around different terms here. Nobody’s actually proposing anything that changes or reforms Health Care. What’s being talked about mostly — or most contentiously — is reforming how we provide the coverage <\/em>or insurance <\/em>for health care. By calling it “Health Care Reform,” everyone’s immediate concern drifts to Death Panels and Government Doctors and the like. But I digress.)<\/small> <\/p>\n What I hope for<\/strong>:<\/p>\n Obama has demonstrated that he both grasps policy and can articulate ideas and inspire his listeners. My hope is that he wields those powers to swing for the fence. Look at what various Congressional committees have come up with — not just the Senate Finance Committee (which is just one group looking at this) but the Senate and the House. Dare to hope, be the change, and all that good stuff. <\/p>\n My hope is that Obama will remember and drive home the principles he’s already laid out and use them to educate, inspire, and convince both his party, the American people, and maybe even some of those GOP “moderates” who would like to be known as something other than party hacks. <\/p>\n As part of that, he also needs to be wielding the stick as well as the carrot — hold out the threat of passage by Reconciliation, of targeting Dems that don’t hold the line come next year. He needs to be — and can be — diplomatic and charming. But gunboats can be part of diplomacy as much as smiles and gladhanding.<\/p>\n What I’m worried about<\/strong>:<\/p>\n Obama has been much more centrist than a lot of progressives expected. If he goes for “the possible” (“Yes We Probably Can!”) without pushing the edge a bit toward what’s needed, not only will the final result likely be less than that (when your opening number is a compromise, your position rarely improves), it will mean any reform effort that gets through will be much more modest than what his supporters expect or, to my mind, what the country needs. I would include in this category appeals \/ deals directly with GOP moderates like Olympia Snowe, relegating the public option to, at best, a “trigger” item (which is then subject to future further wrangling and likely abolishment).<\/p>\n Unfortunately, I think this is the most likely possibility. I think the desire to play it safe enough to get something <\/em>passed, rather than fight for what should <\/em>be passed, will lead to this middle of the road solution. And that will set the tone for the rest of Obama’s eight (or four) years.<\/p>\n What I’m afraid of<\/strong>:<\/p>\n Obama’s near-obsession with bipartisanship to date has led to the Dems — in the Senate Finance Committee in particular — giving away the store time and again, with essentially nothing to show for it. The GOP’s vision for bipartisanship is gutting any initiative that comes along, negotiating in DC while playing to the base back home, then refusing to vote for even minimalistic legislation (Heaven forfend that the Dems should get credit for anything, after all; how the GOP looks in 2010 is much more important than how the populace is faring). <\/p>\n If Obama starts <\/em>with something that he hopes John Boehner or Charles Grassley might vote for, he might as well save time and skip the speech altogether, because he’ll have thrown away almost everything but window dressing on reform, and he still won’t get those Republican votes. He should also update his resume, because if he can lead in this charge, then the Dems in both 2010 and 2012 will have a very bleak time of it, facing a re-energized GOP and a disheartened Democratic base.<\/p>\n Well, we’ll see in, oh, about three hours how it goes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"