The Jurassic Manifesto of 2010: Further Thoughts on the Election

I think Scott Brown’s victory shows what happens when firm leadership above the ticket is lacking. To be sure, Coakley ran a wretched campaign. But I’m not buying attempts to deflect criticism from the Obama Administration. The majority like the president personally and believe he means well, but if MA is any indication, they’re obviously not pleased with what he has done. Some of the displeasure may owe to political amnesia and stupid, childish expectations that the new chief would wave a magic wand and undo eight years of unbridled irresponsibility. But not all of it, and perhaps not even most of it. I thought the numbers Elizabeth provided in her comment on the previous post were extremely valuable in explaining why MA voters cast ballots as they did. So thanks.

The basic principle our lawyerly and cautious president has been ignoring, in my view, is this: if you want to get something done in politics, you need to make it very clear what that something is and then passionately keep the focus on it until you get what you want. Clarity, focus, intensity. Do you hear the mantra? Kind of like a caffeinated version of Om Mani Padme Hum. Then maybe the people will have some “compassion” – and even some passion – for what you want to do.

I’m hearing that passing the health-care bill now may actually backfire and already there are suggestions of retrenchment. President Obama himself is quoted as saying not to jam it through under the circumstances. That’s how I interpreted Barney Frank’s comments today, too—trying to push through the bill at the last minute may look like a hugger-mugger repudiation of the voters’ will, or at least it will be played that way to strong effect by the opposition. If so, forget the 10,000 page comprehensive bills—there’s no time for them now, with an election coming up in November. Policy-wise, the only route I see back to the good offices of the public is the following: offer, promote and quickly pass simple, well-defined pieces of legislation pertaining to health care and the economy and the financial sector in particular—proposals that address citizens’ needs and anxieties. In sum, this amounts to what we might call strong incrementalism:

1. Nobody, and I mean nobody (outside the Republican establishment, that is) favors certain practices on the part of health insurers: Democrats, Independents, and most rank-and-file Republicans surely don’t think it’s right to cancel an individual’s policy when he or she becomes sick, or because the payment got lost in the mail, etc. Kicking people when they’re down is something ordinary citizens find intolerable. Why not propose legislation outright banning such fraudulent practices? And then dare those obstructionist, corporatist mother-truckers in congress to go against it and watch their heads get handed to them in November.

2. While we’re at it, how about redefining more narrowly what can and cannot be labeled a “pre-existing condition,” and setting some limits on what insurers can charge for people with such conditions? Doing so would provide a measure of security for at least some individuals who have conditions that shouldn’t be much trouble if they have access to basic services. Obviously, making larger changes to this area of insurance policy threatens the private insurers’ whole way of making a profit (which is to say that it threatens the very concept of private health insurance as we now find it), so it can only be dealt with fully if and when there is some consensus on comprehensive reform. But what can be done in the meantime, should be.

3. Something straightforward might be doable regarding insurance portability—something that makes a considerable advance on COBRA. People are afraid of leaving their jobs, or losing them, and almost immediately finding themselves without affordable insurance. I’m no expert and don’t know exactly what that legislation would entail, but extending the window of coverage long enough to allow people some mobility, some maneuvering room between jobs, seems vital.

4. Nobody (again with the above caveat stated in #1) is anything short of angry at the way certain elements in the financial sector have been behaving. The Democrats’ cluelessness and/or cowardice in the face of glaring, cynical abuses makes them look like effete French aristocrats on the eve of the Revolution. Either they just don’t get it, or they do—and the latter possibility is much worse because it means they are complicit. It’s time for the Administration to bring in new, capable hands not associated (directly or indirectly) with the near-collapse of the financial sector or with designing subsequent bailouts—devices that seemed to many people like strings-free rewards to the very people and companies whose greedy practices have either caused, or at least exacerbated, our economic troubles. You cannot blame people for being upset with anyone who shows too much regard for execs taking seven-figure bonuses while others are sleeping under a bridge thanks to their unconscionable practices.

5. A new “jobs, jobs, jobs” bill. Construction in particular has been hit hard. Give them good things that need doing, fast. The 10% unemployment rate, and the much higher under-employment rate, is hammering the country’s morale and even its economic viability—not to mention its political sustainability. I don’t believe the current state of the economy is the effect of a normal business-cycle downturn. It’s due to an untreated disease in the vital organs of C21 American post-industrial capitalism, in which finance-sector hocus-pocus has become the engine of prosperity for a limited number of inside players in a cynical game. This is what is so manifest and so intolerable to so many.

They don’t call the presidency a bully pulpit for nothing, and in my view, President Obama needs to start using it as one. You don’t overcome a filibuster by appealing gently to bipartisanship—your only chance is to get the people on your side and make the would-be filibusterers afraid for their political skins. If the president can’t do this, he will fail, and fail badly—maybe as badly as candidate Coakley—in spite of his considerable charm, intelligence, and good intentions. The only thing his initial and sustained appeal to “bipartisanship” yielded, it’s easy to see now, was otherwise unnecessary delay and, therefore, thanks to the election results in Massachusetts, the likely scuttling of large-scale health reform. True, nobody quite saw this particular turn coming, but strange things happen when you let months slip by in a quixotic search for an aliquot of good will. But transition quickly to a strong incrementalism, and who knows? The good will that seemed no more to be found where the president had sought it than the Renaissance alchemists’ lapis philosophorum, might just materialize from the self-concern of anxious politicians. One can hope.