Mr. Krauthammer, did the Nobel Commitee in Oslo honor or doom the Obama presidency by awarding him the Peace Prize?
Charles Krauthammer: It is so comical. Absurd. Any prize that goes to Kellogg and Briand, Le Duc Tho and Arafat, and Rigoberta Menchú, and ends up with Obama, tells you all you need to know. For Obama it's not very good because it reaffirms the stereotypes about him as the empty celebrity.
Why does it?
He is a man of perpetual promise. There used to be a cruel joke that said Brazil is the country of the future, and always will be; Obama is the Brazil of today's politicians. He has obviously achieved nothing. And in the American context, to be the hero of five Norwegian leftists, is not exactly politically positive.
It hardly makes sense to blame him for losing the Olympic bid in one week, and then for winning the Nobel Prize the next.
He should have simply said: "This is very nice, I appreciate the gesture, but I haven't achieved what I want to achieve." But he is not the kind of man that does that.
Should he have turned down the prize?
He would never turn that down. The presidency is all about him. Just think about the speech he gave in Berlin. There is something so preposterous about a presidential candidate speaking in Berlin. And it was replete with all these universalist clichés, which is basically what he's been giving us for nine months.
Why do Europeans react so positively to him?
Because Europe, for very understandable reasons, has been chafing for 60 years under the protection, but also the subtle or not so subtle domination of America. Europeans like to see the big guy cut down to size, it's a natural reaction. You know, Europe ran the world for 400 or 500 years until the civilizational suicide of the two World Wars. And then America emerged as the world hegemon, with no competition and unchallenged. The irony is America is the only hegemonic power that never sought hegemony, unlike, for example, Napoleonic France. Americans are not intrinsically imperial, but we ended up dominant by default: Europe disappeared after the Second World War, the Soviet Union disappeared in 1991, so here we are. Of course Europeans like to see the hegemon diminished, and Obama is the perfect man to do that.
Maybe Europeans want to just see a different America, one they can admire again.
Admire? Look at Obama's speech at the U.N. General Assembly: "No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation." Take the first half of that sentence: No nation can dominate another. There is no 8-year-old who would say that -- it's so absurd. And the second half? That is adolescent utopianism. Obama talks in platitudes, but offers a vision to the world of America diminished or constrained, and willing to share leadership in a way that no other presidency and no other great power would. Could you imagine if the Russians were hegemonic, or the Chinese, or the Germans -- that they would speak like this?
Is America's power not already diminished?
Relative to what?
To emerging powers.
The Chinese are rising, the Indians have a very long way to go. But I'm old enough to remember the late 1980s, "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" by Paul Kennedy and the prevailing view that America was in decline and Japan was the rising power. The fashion now is that the Chinese will overtake the United States. As with the great Japan panic, there are all kinds of reasons why that will not happen.
Look, eventually American hegemony will fade. In time, yes. But now? Economically we now have serious problems, creating huge amounts of debt that we cannot afford and that could bring down the dollar and even cause hyperinflation. But nothing is inevitable. If we make the right choices, if we keep our economic house in order, we can avert an economic collapse. We can choose to decline or to stay strong.
Do you really believe that Obama deliberately wants to weaken the U.S.?
The liberal vision of America is that it should be less arrogant, less unilateral, more internationalist. In Obama's view, America would subsume itself under a fuzzy internationalism in which the international community, which I think is a fiction, governs itself through the U.N.
A nightmare?
Worse than that: an absurdity. I can't even imagine serious people would believe it, but I think Obama does. There is a way America will decline -- if we choose first to wreck our economy and then to constrain our freedom of action through subordinating ourselves to international institutions which are 90 percent worthless and 10 percent harmful.
And there is not even 1 percent that is constructive?
No. The U.N. is worse than disaster. The U.N. creates conflicts. Look at the disgraceful U.N. Human Rights Council: It transmits norms which are harmful, anti-liberty and anti-Semitic among other things. The world would be better off in its absence.
And Obama is, in your eyes …
He's becoming ordinary. In the course of his presidency, Obama has gone from an almost magical charismatic figure to an ordinary politician. Ordinary. Average. His approval ratings are roughly equal to what the last five presidents' were at the same time in their first term. Other people have already said he's done and finished because his healthcare plans ran into trouble; but I say they're wrong. He's going to come back, he will pass something on healthcare, there's no question. He will have a blip, be somewhat rehabilitated politically, but he won't be able to pass anything on climate change. He will not be the great transformer he imagines himself to be. A president like others -- with successes and failures.
Every incoming president to the White House has to confront reality and disappoint voters.
True. But what made Obama unique was that he was the ultimate charismatic politician -- the most unknown stranger ever to achieve the presidency in the United States. No one knew who he was, he came out of nowhere, he had this incredible persona that floated him above the fray, destroyed Hillary, took over the Democratic Party and became president. This is truly unprecedented: a young unknown with no history, no paper trail, no well-known associates, self-created.
There was tremendous goodwill, even I was thrilled on Election Day, even though I had voted against him and argued against him.
What moved you that day?
It's redemptive for a country that began in the sin of slavery to see the day, I didn't think I would live to see the day, when a black president would be elected.
Now he was not my candidate. I would have preferred the first black president to have been somebody ideologically congenial to me, say, Colin Powell (whom I encouraged to run in 2000) or Condoleezza Rice. But I felt truly proud to be an American as I saw him sworn in. I remain proud of this historic achievement.
What major mistakes has Obama made?
I don't know whether I should call it a mistake, but it turns out he is a left-liberal, not center-right the way Bill Clinton was. The analogy I give is that in America we play the game between the 40-yard lines, in Europe you go all the way from goal line to goal line. You have communist parties, you have fascist parties, we don't have that, we have very centrist parties.
So Obama wants to push us to the 30-yard line, which for America is pretty far. Right after he was elected, he gave an address to Congress and promised to basically remake the basic pillars of American society -- education , energy and healthcare. All this would move America toward a social democratic European-style state. It is outside of the norm of America.
Yet, he had promised these reforms during the campaign.
Hardly. He's now pushing a cap-and-trade energy reform. During the campaign he said that would cause skyrocketing utility rates. On healthcare, the reason he's had such resistance is because he promised reform, not a radical remaking of the whole system.
So he didn't see the massive resistance coming?
Obama misread his mandate. He was elected six weeks after a financial collapse unlike any seen in 60 years; after eight years of a presidency which had tired the country; in the middle of two wars that made the country opposed to the Republican government that involved us in the wars; and against a completely inept opponent, John McCain. Nevertheless, Obama still only won by 7 points. But he thought it was a great sweeping mandate and he could implement his social democratic agenda.
Part of the problem when it comes to healthcare is the lack of solidarity in the American way of thinking. Can a president change a country?
Yes. Franklin D. Roosevelt did it. Back then, we didn't have a welfare state, we didn't have old-age pensions, we didn't have unemployment insurance. This country was the Wild West until FDR. Yes, you can change the spirit of America.
If Obama is so radical, why is the left wing of the Democratic Party so unhappy with him?
They are disillusioned because he has ignored some of their social agenda, such as gay rights; continued some of the Bush policies he had once denounced, such as the detention without trial for terrorists; and on his large agenda for education and energy, where he has had no success.
How could Obama still win Republican support for healthcare reform?
He should finally realize that we need to reform our insane malpractice system. The U.S. is spending between $60 billion and $200 billion a year on protection against lawsuits. I used to be a doctor, I know how much is wasted on defensive medicine. Everybody I practiced with spends hours and enormous amounts of money on wasted tests, diagnostic and procedures -- all to avoid lawsuits. The Democrats will not touch it. When Howard Dean was asked why, he said honestly and explicitly that Democrats don't want to antagonize the trial lawyers who donate huge amounts of money to the Democrats.
What would be your solution?
I would make Americans pay half a percent tax on their health insurance and create a pool to socialize the cost of medical errors. That would save hundreds of billions of dollars that could be used to insure the uninsured. And second, I would abolish the absurd prohibition against buying health insurance in another state -- that reduces competition and keeps health insurance rates artificially high.
But you also need to cut back on healthcare expenses.
It is absolutely crazy that in America employees receive health insurance from their employers -- and at the same time a tax break for this from the federal government. It's a $250 billion a year loophole in the government's budget. If you taxed healthcare benefits, you would have enough revenue for the government to give back to the individual to purchase their own insurance. If you did those two reforms alone, you would have the basis for affordable health insurance in America.
What the Democrats seem to be aiming for, however, is something somewhat different: the government gets control of the healthcare system by proxy; you heavily regulate the insurance companies, you subsidize the uninsured. That kind of reform would also work, but less efficiently -- and because of its unsustainable costs, we would, in the end, have to go to a system of rationing, the way the British do, the way the Canadians do, there is no other way. Obama can't say any of that, the word rationing is too unpopular.
Mr. Krauthammer, can a Nobel Peace Prize winner send more troops to Afghanistan?
Sure, I don't see why not. The prize could have two contrary effects. It could give him an incentive to send more troops to show his own people that he is not an instrument of five Norwegian leftists. Or it can work the other way where in order not to lose the popularity he obviously feels from Europe, he would be less inclined. I think whatever impulses come out of those considerations neutralize each other. The prize will have zero effect on his decision.
Part 2: "What the Obama administration pretends is realism is naïve nonsense"
You have called him a "young Hamlet" over his hesitation about making a decision on Afghanistan. However, he's just carefully considering the options after Bush shot so often from the hip.
No. The strategy he's revising is not the Bush strategy, it's the Obama strategy. On March 27, he stood there with a background of flags, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on one side and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the other, and said: "Today, I'm announcing a comprehensive, new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan." So don't tell me this is revising eight years of Bush, he's not. For all these weeks and months he's been revising his own strategy, and that's OK, you're allowed to do that. But if you're president and you're commander in chief, and your guys are getting shot and killed in the field, and you think "maybe the strategy I myself announced with great fanfare six months ago needs to be revised," do it in quiet. Don't show the world that you're utterly at sea and have no idea what to do! Your European allies already are skittish and reluctant, and wondering whether they ought to go ahead. It's your own strategy, if it's not working, then you revise it and fix it. You just don't demoralize your allies.
Is Afghanistan still a war of necessity, still a strategic interest?
The phrase "war of necessity and war of choice" is a phrase that came out of a different context. Milan Kundera once wrote, "a small country is a country that can disappear and knows it." He was thinking of prewar Czechoslovakia. Israel is a country that can disappear and knows it. America, Germany, France, Britain are not countries that can disappear. They can be defeated but they cannot disappear. For the great powers, and especially for the world superpower, very few wars are wars of necessity. In theory, America could adopt a foreign policy of isolationism and survive. We could fight nowhere, withdraw from everywhere -- South Korea, Germany, Japan, NATO, the United Nations -- if we so chose. From that perspective, every war since World War II has been a war of choice.
So using those categories -- wars of necessity, wars of choice -- is unhelpful in thinking through contemporary American intervention. In Afghanistan the question is: Do the dangers of leaving exceed the dangers of staying.
Gen. Stanley McCrystal is asking for more troops. Is that really the right strategy?
Gen. Stanley McCrystal is the world expert on counterterrorism. For five years he ran the most successful counterterrorism operation probably in the history of the world: His guys went after the bad guys in Iraq, they ran special ops, they used the Predators and they killed thousands of jihadists that we don't even know about, it was all under the radar. And now this same general tells Obama that the counterterrorism strategy in Afghanistan will fail, you have to do counterinsurgency, population protection. That would seem an extremely persuasive case that counterterrorism would not work.
You famously coined the term "Reagan Doctrine" to describe Ronald Reagan's foreign policy. What is the "Obama Doctrine"?
I would say his vision of the world appears to me to be so naive that I am not even sure he's able to develop a doctrine. He has a view of the world as regulated by self-enforcing international norms, where the peace is kept by some kind of vague international consensus, something called the international community, which to me is a fiction, acting through obviously inadequate and worthless international agencies. I wouldn't elevate that kind of thinking to a doctrine because I have too much respect for the word "doctrine."
Are you saying that diplomacy always fails?
No, foolishness does. Perhaps when he gets nowhere on Iran, nowhere with North Korea, when he gets nothing from the Russians in return for what he did to the Poles and the Czechs, gets nowhere in the Middle East peace talks -- maybe at that point he'll begin to rethink whether the world really runs by international norms, consensus, and sweetness and light, or whether it rests on the foundation of American and Western power that, in the final analysis, guarantees peace.
That is the cynical approach.
The realist approach. Henry Kissinger once said that peace can be achieved only one of two ways: hegemony or balance of power. Now that is real realism. What the Obama administration pretends is realism is naive nonsense.
How do you solve problems like climate change if international institutions are failing?
It's not the institution that does it, it's the confluence of interests. Where there is a confluence of interests among nations, as, for example, the swine flu or polio, you can get well-functioning international institutions like the World Health Organization. And you can act. Climate change is different, because the science remains hypothetical and the potential costs staggering.
You think it's a speculative theory?
My own view is that there is man-made warming. On several occasions I have written that I don't think you can pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere indefinitely and not have a reaction. But there are great scientists such as Freeman Dyson, one of the greatest physicists of the last hundred years, who has studied the question, who believes quite the opposite. The reason transnational action is so difficult is because the major problem with climate change is, A) that there is no consensus, and, B) that the economic cost is simply staggering. Reversing it completely might mean undoing the modern industrial economy.
I'm not against international institutions that would try to tackle it. But the way to go, at least in the short run, is to go to nuclear power. It's amazing to me that people who are so alarmed about global warming are so reluctant to adopt the obvious short-term solution -- the bridge until the day when we have affordable renewable energy -- of nuclear power. It seems to me intellectually dishonest. Nuclear is obviously not the final answer because it produces its own waste -- but you have a choice. There's no free lunch. If you want an industrial economy, you need energy. If you want energy, it will produce pollution. You can have it in two forms. You can have it dissipated in the atmosphere -- like carbon dioxide -- which then you cannot recover, or you can have the waste concentrated in one small space like nuclear. That is far easier to deal with. The idea that you can be able to create renewable energy at a price anywhere near the current price for oil or gas or coal is a fantasy.
Do you basically think Obama is going to be a one-term president?
No, I think he has a very good chance of being reelected. For two reasons. First, there's no real candidate on the other side, and you can't beat something with nothing. Secondly, it'll depend on the economy -- and just from American history, in the normal economic cycles, presidents who have their recessions at the beginning of their first term get reelected (Reagan, Clinton, the second Bush), and presidents who have them at the end of their first term don't (Carter, the first Bush). Obama will lose a lot of seats in next year's congressional election, but the economy should be on the upswing in 2012.
Is the conservative movement in the United States in decline?
When George W. Bush won in 2004, there was lots of stuff written about the end of liberalism and the death of the Democratic Party. Look where we are now.
A Democrat is back in the White House, the party also controls Congress.
Exactly. We see the usual overreading of history whenever one side loses. Look, there are cycles in American politics. U.S. cycles are even more pronounced because we Americans have a totally entrepreneurial residential system. We don't have parliamentary opposition parties with a shadow prime minister and shadow cabinets. Every four years, the opposition reinvents itself. We have no idea who will be the Republican nominee in 2012. The party structures are very fluid. We have a history of political parties being thrown out of the White House after two terms -- as has happened every single time with only one exception (Ronald Reagan) since World War II. The idea that one party is done in the U.S. is silly. The Republicans got killed in 2006 and 2008, but they will be back.
The party lacks a strong, intelligent leader.
Yes. And if the Republicans don't have one by 2012, they'll lose and they'll have to wait till 2016. It could take eight years to develop. You know, people say -- the White House was pushing this idea -- that the radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the opposition because there's no other leader. Well, ask yourself, in 2001 and 2002 and 2003, who was the leader of the Democratic Party? There was none. We don't have a parliamentary system in which opposition leaders are designated.
Some people say you're that leader.
I'm just getting to an age where a lot of my contemporaries are retiring or dying. So I'm on default a voice of authority. I don't attribute very much to that.
Who will be the next leader of the Republican Party?
Some presidential candidates from last year will return in 2012. Sarah Palin is not a serious contender, but somebody like Mitt Romney will be. He is a serious guy, he understands the economy. There will also be some young people many haven't yet heard about, such as Rep. Paul Ryan or Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Or outsiders like the mastermind behind the surge in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, who might retire from the military and run for president on the Republican ticket.
Many people, however, currently think the Republicans are the party of "no."
That perception is a serious problem for them.
At the end of Bush's second term, he granted you a long interview. Afterward, you wrote that history would judge Bush kindly. Why?
Basically I think Bush will have the same historical rehabilitation that Harry Truman did.
And why is that?
Truman left in the middle of an unpopular war, to use your phrase, a war of choice. Truman didn't have to go into South Korea. And he was reviled and ridiculed for the stalemate that resulted. Now, he's seen as one of the great presidents of the 20th century.
I think Bush actually handled the Iraq war better than Truman handled the Korean War. For one thing, the number of losses is about one-tenth. Secondly, he made the right decision with the surge. Thirdly, if Iraq turns out well, meaning becomes a country fairly self-sufficient and fairly friendly to the West, it will have a more important effect on the West than having a non-communist South Korea. The Middle East is strategically a far more important region.
Bush's worst mistake was the conduct of the Iraq war in the middle years -- 2004-2006 -- and the attempt to win on the cheap, with a light footprint.
On the other hand, I think he did exactly the right thing after 9/11. Look at the Patriot Act, which revolutionized how we deal with domestic terrorism, passed within six weeks of 9/11 in the fury of the moment. Testimony to how well Bush got it right is that Democrats, who now control Congress and had been highly critical of it, are now after eight years reauthorizing it with almost no significant changes.
Afghanistan is more problematic. Our success in overthrowing the Taliban in 100 days was remarkable. It's one of the great military achievements of all time. On the other hand, holding Afghanistan is a lot harder than taking it, and to this day we are not sure how to do it. But the initial success in 2001-2002 did decimate and scatter al-Qaida. It is no accident that we have not suffered a second attack -- something no one who lived in Washington on Sept. 11 thought possible.
I'm sure he will be rehabilitated in the long term.
Clare Booth Luce once said that every president is remembered for one thing, and that's what Bush will be remembered for. He kept us safe.
Is it too early to foresee what Obama will be remembered for?
It is quite early. It could be his election.
Mr. Krauthammer, we thank you for this interview.
The White House is asking journalists covering President Barack Obama's vacation in Hawaii to respect the privacy of his 8- and 11-year-old daughters.
White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton and Michelle Obama's press secretary Katie McCormick Lelyveld issued a joint statement on Saturday urging journalists not to photograph or film Sasha or Malia Obama when they are on excursions without their parents.
The White House made a similar request when journalists traveled with the Obamas for a summer vacation on Martha's Vineyard. Then, the White House invited journalists to cover the first daughters only when they went for snacks, souvenirs and bike rides with their parents.
The daughters regularly join their parents at public events.
President Barack Obama had his vacation interrupted by a briefing on a failed terrorist attack on a Northwest flight as it was landing in Detroit.
He discussed it with security officials on Christmas Day and stricter security measures were quickly imposed on airline travel.
Later in the day, he visited military members and their families at a Marine Corps base near his vacation home in Hawaii.
Obama and first lady Michelle Obama made an unannounced stop at Marine Corps Base Hawaii as military members at their holiday meal. He walked through the dining hall and thanked men and women in uniform for their service.
Obama is spending his holiday at a rented home nearby in Kailua.
In brief remarks Thursday morning, President Obama praised the Senate for passing its version of healthcare reform legislation.
"With passage of reform bills in both the House and the Senate, we are now finally poised to deliver on the promise of real, meaningful health-insurance reform that will bring additional security and stability to the American people," Obama said.
In a comment that appeared intended for critics of the bill on the left, the president also said, "these are not small reforms; these are big reforms," adding, "If passed, this will be the most important piece of social legislation since the Social Security Act passed in the 1930s and the most important reform of our health care system since Medicare passed in the 1960s."
Finally, in a nod to the fact that a final bill -- which still has to be worked out by the House and Senate, and then passed again -- will not, as he and his fellow Democrats had hoped, be hitting his desk before the end of this year, Obama said, "For the sake of our citizens, our economy, and our future, let's make 2010 the year we finally reform health care in the United States of America."
Obama's full statement:
In a historic vote that took place this morning, members of the Senate joined their colleagues in the House of Representatives to pass a landmark health-insurance reform package; legislation that brings us toward the end of a nearly century-long struggle to reform America's health-care system.
Every since Teddy Roosevelt first called for reform in 1912, seven presidents -- Democrats and Republicans alike -- have taken up the cause of reform. Time and time again, such efforts have been blocked by special-interest lobbyists who perpetuated a status quo that works better for the insurance industry than it does for the American people.
But with passage of reform bills in both the House and the Senate, we are now finally poised to deliver on the promise of real, meaningful health-insurance reform that will bring additional security and stability to the American people.
The reform bill that passed the Senate this morning, like the House bill, includes the toughest measures ever taken to hold the insurance industry accountable. Insurance companies will no longer be able to deny you coverage on the basis of a pre-existing condition. They will no long be able to drop your coverage when you get sick.
No longer will you have to pay unlimited amounts out of your own pocket for the treatments you need. And you'll be able to appeal unfair decisions by insurance companies to an independent party.
If this legislation becomes law, workers won't have to worry about losing coverage if they lose or change jobs. Families will save on their premiums. Businesses that would see their costs rise if we do not act will save money now and they will save money in the future.
This bill will strengthen Medicare and extend the life of the program. It will make coverage affordable for over 30 million Americans who do not have it -- 30 million Americans.
And because it is paid for and curbs the waste and inefficiency in our health care system, this bill will help reduce our deficit by as much as $1.3 trillion in the coming decades, making it the largest deficit-reduction plan in over a decade.
As I've said before, these are not small reforms; these are big reforms. If passed, this will be the most important piece of social legislation since the Social Security Act passed in the 1930s and the most important reform of our health care system since Medicare passed in the 1960s.
What makes it so important is not just its cost savings or its deficit reductions. It's the impact reform will have on Americans who no longer have to go without a checkup or prescriptions that they need because they can't afford them, on families who no longer have to worry that a single illness will send them into financial ruin, and on businesses that will no longer face exorbitant insurance rates that hamper their competitiveness. It's the difference reform will make in the lives of the American people.
I want to commend Senator Harry Reid, extraordinary work that he did, Speaker Pelosi, for her extraordinary leadership and dedication. Having passed reform bills in both the House and the Senate, we now have to take up the last and most important step and reach an agreement on a final reform bill that I can sign into law.
And I look forward to working with members of Congress in both chambers over the coming weeks to do exactly that. With today's vote, we are now incredibly close to making health insurance reform a reality in this country. Our challenge then is to finish the job.
We can't doom another generation of Americans to soaring costs and eroding coverage and exploding deficits. Instead, we need to do what we were sent here to do and improve the lives of the people we serve.
For the sake of our citizens, our economy, and our future, let's make 2010 the year we finally reform health care in the United States of America.
Buyer's remorse seems to be setting in among Democrats, even as the U.S. Senate is poised to vote (as I write this) on the most significant piece of social reform since the 1960s.
No less a figure than Dr. Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor and Democratic National Committee chairman, wrote that, were he a senator, "I would not vote for the current healthcare bill. Any measure that expands private insurers' monopoly over healthcare and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real healthcare reform."
Dean's reservations have been widely echoed on the left. The healthcare bill's big winners, they complain, are the insurance industry, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and doctors. Because it lacks both the "public option" (a government-run insurance company competing with private ones to drive down costs) and the Medicare buy-in that was initially highly touted, then quickly shot down by Holy Joe Lieberman, some Democrats fear that the party is both providing inadequate coverage and setting itself up for a voter backlash.
Once the public realizes that the bill mandates everybody to buy private health insurance — pretty much the way everybody has to carry auto insurance — there's sure to be unhappiness not only on the tea-party right, but also among working people who ordinarily lean Democratic. Politics Daily's David Corn saw it coming. "I feel as if I'm watching a cheesy horror flick and some poor unsuspecting person is about to open the wrong door," he wrote last September, "and you want to scream, 'Hey, don't open that door!'"
To be sure, the bill provides generous subsidies for individuals and small businesses currently unable to afford coverage. And it doesn't kick in for a couple of years, when one hopes the current recession will be a bad memory.
© 2009 by Gene Lyons. Distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Association
Even so, Salon's estimable Glenn Greenwald sees it as a sellout: "The healthcare bill," he writes, "is one of the most flagrant advancements of ... corporatism yet, as it bizarrely forces millions of people to buy extremely inadequate products from the private health insurance industry — regardless of whether they want it or, worse, whether they can afford it," even with some subsidies.
MSNBC's self-dramatizing Keith Olbermann goes further, vowing to become what the Russians used to call a "refusenik." "I hereby pledge," he announced, "that I will not buy this perversion of healthcare reform. Pass this at your peril, senators. And sign it at yours, Mr. President. I will not buy this insurance. Brand me a lawbreaker if you choose. Fine me if you will. Jail me if you must."
As diverting a spectacle as that might be, for Democrats to heed such overheated rhetoric would be catastrophically foolish. Olbermann and others spent the 2008 primaries charging that Democrats skeptical of Barack Obama had racist motives. Now that he's poised to sign the most far-reaching enhancement of the American social contract since Lyndon Johnson, President Obama has now been rendered impure in their eyes.
Here are a few truths: First, we've been living in a one-dollar, one-vote corporatized democracy for a long time. If this is news to you, then you're probably also shocked to learn that the U.S. Constitution, by awarding two senators to each of what H.L. Mencken called "the cow states" — no insult to the cows in my own barn — was deliberately crafted to make fundamental change difficult. Who made "moderates" like Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Joe Lieberman of Aetna mini-presidents? Alas, the founding fathers did.
Living in such a polity, anybody who thought entrenched interests like the insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital industries weren't going to find ways to make money off healthcare reform probably wasn't paying attention back at the beginning, when Obama said that despite the abstract appeal of a Canadian-style single-payer system, it was a political non-starter. As Greenwald points out, that told you right there that the White House was going to settle for the best corporate compromise it could get.
Sure, there's a risk of backlash. The problem is no universal or near-universal health-insurance plan — public or private — can be voluntary. Mandates are, well, mandatory to prevent opportunists from gaming the system: Buying insurance only after they get sick. Nobody can insure "previously existing conditions" if clients come and go at will.
Insurers forbidden by law from canceling policies also need a base of healthy rate payers. Public or private, it's a two-way street; costs can't be cut without a bigger risk pool.
Indeed, a gradual counter-backlash seems likelier, as all but the most perfervid tea partiers gradually recognize that their families are more secure, and that none of the GOP scare stories — "death panels," rationing, etc. — have any basis in reality. Retreat now is unthinkable. Imperfections notwithstanding, once universal coverage is established in principle, there'll be no going back.
With liberals getting progressively more upset with President Obama, it was only a matter of time before someone started running ads about it. One group, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, is doing just that, hitting him for earlier statements he'd made about healthcare reform: Specifically, promising a public option and opposing a mandate that would force people to buy insurance.
The ad's going to be running in Washington, D.C., as well as in Wisconsin -- the latter is an attempt to change liberal Sen. Russ Feingold's vote, Sam Stein reports. Notably, it goes right at the heart of Obama's appeal during the presidential campaign, saying at the end, "A bill without a public option is not change we can believe in."
As we were editing Salon's Bogus Stories of 2009, I couldn't help thinking about the current impasse, among liberals, over the healthcare reform bill. It wasn't just that Sarah Palin's death panels were a bogus story -- yet one that hijacked the healthcare debate for weeks. Right now a fledgling bogus story can be seen on cable news every hour or so: The Democratic Party is about to self-destruct over healthcare reform.
Unfortunately, this could be one of those bogus stories that the media help turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
You can't watch cable news lately without some mainstream commentator hyping the infighting among progressives, usually in superficial and inflammatory terms. Chris Matthews described netroots opponents of the healthcare compromise as folks who "get their giggles from sitting in the backseat and bitching." CNBC's John Harwood told them to stop taking "hallucinogenic drugs," and Time's Joe Klein exhorted them (once again) to "grow up." From the other side, MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan blasted liberal reform-bill backer Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schulz so hard he had to apologize to her, and Keith Olbermann promised to go to jail rather than buy insurance as the bill would mandate.
Even as progressives engage in an important and fascinating debate over strategy and policy regarding the healthcare reform compromise likely to pass the Senate, it's being covered as a clash of personalities: the "netroots/nutroots" vs. the pragmatists; the wonks vs. the activists, Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake vs. the Washington Post's Ezra Klein.
Of course, a few people on the netroots left have pushed their own specious story lines, comparing the sides in this debate to 2002's liberal split over the Iraq war. As someone who passionately opposed the war (to MSM ridicule) and thinks the coming healthcare reform compromise, while disappointing, is a deal worth making, I reject simplistic lefty schematics.
If you can only read one thing about this debate, read Glenn Greenwald's breakdown of the real fissures the bill is exposing within the party (where he finds merit in Jake McIntyre's 2002 Iraq vs. 2009 HCR positions). There is a genuine and justified concern among progressives that this bill enshrines an alarming corporatist Democrat view of "reform": Make nominally liberal social-service expansions safe for the private sector. That is absolutely what is going on.
But that's as far as the Democrats and the progressive movement have taken us to date. We have a lot more work to do. In my opinion, left and center Democrats need to compromise now, make good on their campaign promise to pass the bill and insure millions more people. And then progressives need to challenge the corporatist pillars of the party in rhetoric, legislation, and in elections, in 2010 and 2012, and beyond.
That's why when it comes to the current healthcare reform bill, I'm with the bill's opponents in the long term, and its liberal supporters in the short term. In the long term, I think the work progressives have done pushing for the public option has already made the bill a better bill. They will likely get more good policy provisions in conference committee. But their opposition is also crucial as a long-term organizing, party-development strategy. It's profoundly frustrating that there's no one on the left who has the clout of Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Aetna, or Ben Nelson, D-Mutual of Omaha. Without being willing to walk away from the table, it's hard to convince the other side you mean business. I understand why some progressives are still demanding that congressional liberals leave the table if the Senate compromise is the only play possible.
I made this point throughout the summer, when liberals like Newsweek's Jon Alter, along with Matthews, were arguing that the left should surrender the public option immediately to ensure the passage of other healthcare reforms. As I said at the time, I don't know who taught those guys to play poker. If you give up on your ideals six months before the final vote, you can't expect to get much from last-minute negotiations.
I'm aware I'm violating my own rules by starting to publicly cast my lot with the backers of compromise. But I'm doing so to ensure there isn't a self-destructive rush to declare the bill wholly evil on the left. I have said it before: I'm disturbed by the stampede to abandon President Obama, and the Democratic Party, by people who sold Obama as the only progressive choice in 2008 -- people like my friends Tom Hayden and Arianna Huffington. Occasionally, I'm tempted, like the self-congratulatory folks who want to superimpose the divisions over the Iraq war, to do the same thing with the 2008 primary -- except Jane Hamsher and I were on the same side back then: on the side of staying neutral and not anointing one candidate the only progressive choice. And Taylor Marsh, who backed Clinton, opposes the likely compromise bill. So there are no simple, let alone simplistic, ways to think about this compromise.
I do believe that the lefties who bought or sold the idea that Obama was the only true progressive in '08 bear a special burden for the current disillusionment among Democrats. Obama mostly campaigned as a centrist Democrat; it was exciting (and a valid reason to prefer him) to have our first African-American nominee, but it wasn't the coming of social democracy in the U.S. I think people who sold Obama that way will be helping to dig progressives out of a ditch for years to come. It would have been great if both leading Democrats had to fight for progressive votes, but a lot of leading progressives bullied Clinton supporters and bowed to Obama prematurely.
But one person bears a much bigger burden for this confusion than Obama propagandists, and that's Obama himself. He's breaking two campaign promises by backing this bill: He (wrongly, in my opinion) opposed the individual mandate in 2008, while correctly backing the public option. Now he's selling out on both. The latest insult is the president telling the Washington Post on Tuesday: "I didn't campaign on the public option," when in fact it was a staple of his policy papers and Web platform. It's an astonishing statement. His supporters are right to chastise Obama. But I don't think defeating the likely compromise is a smart way to do it.
Obama's disappointing failure to push the public option aside, I think Democrats should back the bill. For one thing, the party has to start delivering on its promises. I agree with Tom Harkin: The likely bill (there is still no actual bill) establishes healthcare as a right, not a privilege. It expands Medicaid to at least 17 million currently uninsured Americans, and grants subsidies to many millions, perhaps 10 million, more. It makes insurance companies pay out 80-85 percent of premium dollars on care. State exchanges may also be able to accomplish something close to a public option (although that is still not clear). And while the individual mandate (and accompanying fines) is of concern without a public option, Jonathan Cohn lays out how much families from 100 to 300 percent of the poverty line will be helped by the bill, and it's extraordinary. Finally, there is no universal healthcare without a universal, individual mandate. So the progressives who are trying to sell that as the lefty "compromise" are wrong.
So, yes, I expect I will support the compromise that emerges from the House-Senate conference committee. I hope House progressives get more concessions -- more and higher subsidies for working- and middle-class Americans, more incentives for insurance companies to compete and lower costs. But in the end, I'm with Harkin and socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders: This bill helps tens of millions of people. It moves us down the road to a genuine and legitimate public health infrastructure. It can also convince people on the fence that Democrats deliver on their promises.
But I won't participate in demonizing the bill's progressive opponents. We will need one another later on. I think the would-be so-called bill-killers are wrong -- but they're not evil, juvenile, self-destructive, solipsistic or any of the other epithets thrown around mainly by lifetime centrist Democratic apologists. They are the people who are trying to stake out a left-wing frontier to balance the likes of Lieberman, Nelson, Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu, and all the Blue Dog Democrats in the House. The MSM -- and some offices in the White House -- still chuckle at the insurgent left, especially the netroots, as immature and impotent. That's a great way to encourage compromise, by the way. To the extent anyone who wants this bill to pass is still peddling this pernicious point of view, they might want to stop it.
Ultimately, I believe liberals aren't convincing when they threaten to pull a Lieberman and kill this bill, because everyone knows they care about people too much. It's a classic Solomonic choice: Put Medicare expansion or the public option in the bill, and Lieberman will kill it, because he killed his conscience long ago. Give Bernie Sanders $25 million in community healthcare clinics, as well as Medicaid or subsidies to get 20-plus million Americans healthcare -- even without a public option -- and Sanders is going to see the real human beings really helped by real healthcare. He's not going to hold out for ideological principle, and everybody knows that.
And, sure, it's hard to for liberal Democrats to negotiate with those who are making this all about ideology. But it's easier to sleep at night. This bill, if it passes, is not the end, but a beginning. I want it to pass, but I respect those who come down on the other side.
BOOKS
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
Obama's first book, a memoir focused on personal issues of race, identity, and community.
By Barack Obama
The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
Obama's second book, in which he shares his personal views on faith and values and offers a vision of the future that involves restoring a government that has fallen out of touch with the people.
By Barack Obama
10 reasons there's a bright future for journalism
An optimistic take on what's coming, both for news outlets and news consumers.
By Mark Glaser, Salon
Obama: From Promise to Power
In this compelling book, a Chicago Tribune reporter draws on interviews with Obama, his family, friends, and rivals, as well as his own extensive coverage since Obama's days in the Illinois Senate, to offer a nuanced look at a man of idealism and ambition intent on making history.
By David Mendell
SPEECHES
July 28, 2004: Obama's first national prime-time speech
In this speech, Barack Obama urges America to remember its unity, pledging that "out of this long political darkness a brighter day will come."
August 28, 2008: Obama's acceptance of the Democratic Party's presidential nomination
In this speech, Obama lays into John McCain, describing him as "anything but independent."
November 5th, 2008: Obama's victory speech
In this speech, Obama tells his ecstatic supporters, and the entire nation, that "change has come to America."
January 20, 2009: Obama's inaugural address
The new president calls upon the nation to face its challenges head on, with determination, strength and a commitment to ensuring the delivery of freedom to future generations.
SALON STORIES
How would Barack Obama handle foreign policy?
The presidential contender on dealing with Iran, fighting AIDS in Africa and restoring America's standing in the world.
By Walter Shapiro, Salon
Chicago is Barack Obama's kind of town
The city has a unique history of launching the careers of powerful black politicians -- which is part of the reason Obama moved there.
By Edward McClelland, Salon
American revolutionary
In his acceptance speech, Barack Obama stood up for Democratic values, took the fight to McCain -- and proved that the United States is still capable of reinventing itself.
By Walter Shapiro, Salon
Barack Obama's epic win
The culmination of a brilliant campaign, Obama's unequivocal defeat of John McCain marks a political and generational transformation.
By Walter Shapiro, Salon
Barack Obama, honeymoon killer?
The Clintonites in his Cabinet, forgiveness for Lieberman, the creeping signs of centrism -- progressives aren't ready to panic, yet.
By Mike Madden, Salon
"A new era of responsibility"
Mixing straight talk about dire times with lofty rhetoric about hope and determination, Obama repudiates Bush and vows to get to work.
By Mike Madden, Salon
OTHER STORIES
The Conciliator
Where is Barack Obama coming from?
By Larissa MacFarquhar, The New Yorker
Time's "Person of the Year" coverage of Obama
A strangely fascinating database of Obama-formation, including everything from "6 Degrees of Obama" to a collection of Obama-themed art from Flickr.
Time
The presidency of Barack Obama
This New York Times megapage is the last word on Barack Obama, including everything from his personal biography to his current political stance on detainees and Africa.
The New York Times
We're Not Just Ballers And Rappers
Why I'm not celebrating the end of the bailout
In Accepting Peace Award, Obama Lectures on Just War