Purely as a cold political calculation, the Republicans do not need a health bill of any kind and they do need to defeat the messy bills that respectively have passed the House and Senate with Democrat-only support.
The President and the Democrats (also speaking politically) meanwhile need a bill, any bill, that addresses health care, so they can take credit and stop looking so ineffectual. And, of course, it would be great politics if they could pull a rabbit out of the hat and get either the House or Senate bill passed.
As far as the public is concerned (as Massachusetts showed), no bill is better than a bad bill. But, also, even a modest good bill would be very cheering right now. It would be good for the country and for the tone of government in Washington. One might hope that sometimes the public interest might take precedence over the partisan interest.
President Obama, after loss of his veto-proof majority in the Senate, had the opportunity to get both parties to go back to the drawing board and draft a modest good bill. To make that happen, however, the President would have to take the issue out of the day-to-day political arena and put it into a trustworthy policy atmosphere. He needed to put off dealing with health care primarily as a political concern. To say this another way, in any honest and sincere negotiation, the two sides need to meet in quiet and in private to see where and how they might compromise. It would be true for a minor civil issue in court. It absolutely would be required for a huge, complicated issue like health care.
Instead, the President decided to pretend to the public that he suddenly was interested in legislative negotiation with the Republicans, while nonchalantly insisting that the negotiation take place in front of hosts of TV and other reporters. He knows that there is no chance of any constructive progress coming from such a circus. That is why, after promising grandly in the campaign that he would put the Conference Committee negotiations on C-Span as they were conducted, he and the Democratic Congressional leaders decided to ignore that promise when the time came to implement it.
If a Conference Committee couldn't expect to get anything serious accomplished in front of TV cameras--when the main political delicacy is the rivalries of House and Senate--how could a serious discussion of overall policy ideas take place between the Republicans and the Democrats and between the Congress and the White House in a room full of cameras and reporters?
The answer is, Mr. Obama knows he is playing games and he knows that any objective observer would know the same. He just counts on this stage show offer to make some political points for him and for his uncritical pals in the media to adopt his talking points on it all.
In fact, the whole proposition shows the essential insincerity of the President on this topic. If you really care about making progress on the health care issue, you have to be disappointed. For him, bipartisanship is nothing more than a stage prop, if that.
Leave a comment