There is a tenet in political circles, especially among Democrats: If you want to look serious, bash your base.
Bill Clinton did it through out his two presidential campaigns and presidential terms, and now President Barack Obama is following suit. In a press conference today that The New York Times described as “defiant,” the president took the expected swipe at his Republican foes — but then, in response to a question from Chuck Todd, turned his attention to the left flank of his own party, saying that liberal complaints that he had again abandoned his base and the party’s principles “reminds me of the debate that we had during health care.”
This is the public option debate all over again. So I pass a signature piece of legislation where we finally get health care for all Americans, something that Democrats had been fighting for for a hundred years, but because there was a provision in there that they didn’t get that would have affected maybe a couple of million people, even though we got health insurance for 30 million people and the potential for lower premiums for 100 million people, that somehow that was a sign of weakness and compromise.
Now, if that’s the standard by which we are measuring success or core principles, then let’s face it, we will never get anything done. People will have the satisfaction of having a purist position and no victories for the American people. And we will be able to feel good about ourselves and sanctimonious about how pure our intentions are and how tough we are, and in the meantime, the American people are still seeing themselves not able to get health insurance because of preexisting conditions or not being able to pay their bills because their unemployment insurance ran out.
That can’t be the measure of how we think about our public service. That can’t be the measure of what it means to be a Democrat. This is a big, diverse country. Not everybody agrees with us. I know that shocks people. The New York Times editorial page does not permeate across all of America. Neither does The Wall Street Journal editorial page. Most Americans, they’re just trying to figure out how to go about their lives and how can we make sure that our elected officials are looking out for us. And that means because it’s a big, diverse country and people have a lot of complicated positions, it means that in order to get stuff done, we’re going to compromise. This is why FDR, when he started Social Security, it only affected widows and orphans. You did not qualify. And yet now it is something that really helps a lot of people. When Medicare was started, it was a small program. It grew.
Under the criteria that you just set out, each of those were betrayals of some abstract ideal. This country was founded on compromise. I couldn’t go through the front door at this country’s founding. And if we were really thinking about ideal positions, we wouldn’t have a union.
It is an eloquent — if badly flawed — argument that conflates the progressive and truly groundbreaking legislation pushed through by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson with a series of capitulations by the current president that have resulted in incremental change, at best.
The healthcare law, despite his protestations, is a huge give-a-way to the insurance companies that contains some small positive improvements. And these tax cuts — well, the president should have stood firm and allowed the entire Bush tax-cut package to expire.
I understand he views this tradeoff as warranted — but he himself said that the package would not aid the economy and, more dangerously, he is creating a rhetorical club the Republicans can use against him and the Democrats two years down the road when this debate crops up again.
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